This list is compiled by the Guardian film team, with all films released in the US during 2022 in contention. Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite films of 2022 in the comments below.
50
Bros
Billy Eichner’s ribald romcom, produced by Judd Apatow, saw two gay men struggling with commitment and heteronormative expectations and was heralded as being a groundbreaking queer first within the straight and strait-laced studio system. But, stake-claiming aside, it is also genuinely funny and insightful. Read the full review
49
Broker
Hirokazu Kore-eda enlisted Parasite’s Song Kang-ho for a rich and emotionally persuasive drama about two friends stealing babies from outside a church and selling them on the adoption parallel market. Read the full review
48
Top Gun: Maverick
Tom Cruise returns almost four decades on for another bout of speed and need: this time he is the mentor to a new generation of navy fighter pilots, led by Miles Teller, playing the son of Maverick’s late wingman, Goose. Read the full review
47
Paris, 13th District
The latest film from Rust and Bone director Jacques Audiard, here putting together a short story collection of sexual encounters and relationships in Paris’ 13th arrondissement, shot in tough black-and-white. Read the full review
46
Holy Spider
Border director Ali Abbasi returned to the Cannes film festival this year with a shocking act of provocation. A grisly thriller loosely based on the true story of a serial killer targeting women in Mashhad, it caused controversy in Iran but won Zar Amir Ebrahimi the lead actress prize at the festival. Read the full review
45
Happening
Golden Lion-winning abortion drama, more relevant than ever, from director Audrey Diwan; a study of a woman (played by Anamaria Vartolomei) who becomes pregnant in early 60s, pre-legalisation France. Read the full review
44
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Entertaining second dose of Rian Johnson’s labyrinthine crime mystery, with Daniel Craig on good form as Hercule Poirot-esque detective Benoit Blanc, here investigating a murder-themed party that turns deadly. Read the full review
43
Vortex
Split-screen dementia drama from Argentine provocateur Gaspar Noé, starring Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun as an elderly couple whose lives are dogged by the latter’s cognitive decline. Read the full review
42
The Woman King
Stirring period epic, starring Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, a brigade of female warriors in west Africa, who are attempting to see off threats from the Oyo empire as well as from slave-buying colonialists. Read the full review
41
Brian and Charles
David Earl and Chris Hayward’s story of an inventor’s relationship with his creation blends Caractacus Potts with Victor Frankenstein to heartwarming effect. Read the full review
40
We (Nous)
French-Senegalese film-maker Alice Diop offers a sensitive portrayal of the disparate communities that live along one of Paris’s commuter rail lines – predating her acclaimed fiction feature debut Saint Omer. Read the full review
39
The Eternal Daughter
Joanna Hogg reunites with Tilda Swinton for an unusual ghost story which sees the actor playing dual roles in a moving and thought-provoking drama that exists within the same universe as her acclaimed autobiographical Souvenir films. Read the full review
38
Everything Went Fine
André Dussollier and Sophie Marceau are outstanding as a father and daughter whose tricky relationship is upended when he asks for her help to die, in François Ozon’s wonderfully observed story. Read the full review
37
Benediction
Terence Davies’ account of the life of Siegfried Sassoon (played by Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi in younger/older versions), tracing his career from lionised war poet to unhappy later life. Read the full review
36
Small Body
Mysterious fable from Italian director Laura Samani, about a woman desperate to revive her stillborn baby who heads off on a quest to find the church that may be able to accomplish it. Read the full review
35
Great Freedom
Intriguing German drama about a former concentration camp inmate imprisoned after the second world war for gay sex acts, and who develops a complex relationship with his straight cellmate. Read the full review
34
All Quiet on the Western Front
Anti-war nightmare of bloodshed and chaos where teenage boys quickly find themselves caught up in the ordeal of trench warfare, in a German-language adaptation of the first world war novel. Read the full review
33
Lingui, the Sacred Bonds
Chadian auteur Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s quiet fable, about a woman torn between social proprieties and respecting her daughter’s decision to get an abortion. Read the full review
32
All That Breathes
Two Indian brothers dedicate themselves to rescuing birds that are being poisoned by pollution in this complex and quietly beautiful film. Read the full review
31
Corsage
Vicky Krieps puts in a star turn as lonely, patronised Elisabeth of Austria in Marie Kreutzer’s austere drama that functions as a cry of anger from the pedestal-prison of an empress. Read the full review
30
Crimes of the Future
As he did with 90s hit Crash, David Cronenberg’s horror sensation creates a bizarre new society of sicko sybarites where pain is the ultimate pleasure and “surgery is the new sex”. Read the full review
29
Cow
American Honey director Andrea Arnold delivers a meaty slice of bovine socio-realism, detailing the life of dairy cows with unflinching and empathic precision. Read the full review
28
No Bears
Complex metafiction of fear in which jailed director Jafar Panahi plays a version of himself, forced to shoot his new film in a town near the border with Turkey. Read the full review
27
White Noise
Don DeLillo’s novel of campus larks and eco dread gets an elegant, droll film treatment from Noah Baumbach, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. Read the full review
26
Fire of Love
Romantic portrait of passionate, doomed volcanologists embraces the mythology around Maurice and Katia Krafft, the scientists who died in the 1991 Mount Unzen disaster. Read the full review
25
Descendant
Powerful documentary on the legacy of slavery showing how an illegal slave ship led to the creation of an Alabama community of inherited trauma but also defiance. Read the full review
24
Nitram
Deeply disturbing drama about mass killer Martin Bryant that shies away from depicting the Port Arthur massacre itself – but outstanding performances mean it’s still a highly unsettling story. Read the full review
23
The Innocents
Creepy-kid horror from Norwegian director Eskil Vogt (co-writer of The Worst Person in the World), about two young sisters who make friends with other children who apparently possess supernatural powers. Read the full review
22
The Northman
Brutal Viking saga based on the same legend as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, with Alexander Skarsgård as the chieftain’s son out for vengeance on the man who murdered his father and took his throne. Read the full review
21
Official Competition
Penélope Cruz is on fire in a delicious movie-industry satire in which she plays an eccentric director using unorthodox techniques to manage lead actors – and polar opposites – Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez. Read the full review
20
Empire of Light
After the extravagant exhaustion of 1917, Sam Mendes slows down, opting for a smaller scale yet bigger emotions in an 80s-set drama about two lonely cinema workers who find solace in each other. Olivia Colman and Top Boy’s Michael Ward give generous and affecting performances. Read the full review
19
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
In an underwhelming year for animated features, our saviour arrived this summer in the unlikely form of an energetic and optimistic talking one-inch shell called Marcel. In a charming and inventive stop-motion adventure, director Dean Fleischer-Camp shows his splashier peers how to make a little do a lot.
18
Living
Exquisitely sad drama starring Bill Nighy in a Kazuo Ishiguro-scripted remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru about a man dealing with a terminal diagnosis. Read the full review
17
You Won’t Be Alone
Spellbinding horror movie from director Goran Stolevski, a witch story that follows a shapeshifter in a 19th-century village. Read the full review
16
Bones and All
Teen cannibal romance with Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell, who dazzle in Luca Guadagnino’s blood-soaked parable of poverty and rebellion. Read the full review
15
Playground
Maya Vanderbeque is brilliant in this short, intense Belgian schoolyard drama as a seven-year-old girl called Nora who tries to confront classroom bullies. Read the full review
14
The Banshees of Inisherin
Guinness-black comedy of male pain in which Martin McDonagh reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in remotest Ireland for an oddball study of isolation and hurt. Read the full review
13
Moonage Daydream
Glorious, shapeshifting eulogy to David Bowie from director Brett Morgen, whose intimate montage of the uniquely influential artist celebrates his career, creativity and unfailing charm. Read the full review
12
Funny Pages
Deliciously dark coming-of-age comedy from Owen Kline, that fuses teen innocence with adult sexuality in a bad-taste debut film that recalls American Splendor and Crumb. Read the full review
11
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Oscar-winning Citizenfour documentary-maker Laura Poitras shifted her focus to artist and activist Nan Goldin and her efforts to topple the Sackler family for their involvement in the opioid epidemic. It’s full of pain but, as the title suggests, also beauty. It became only the second documentary to be awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.
10
Saint Omer
French-Senegalese director Alice Diop gives us a no-frills courtroom drama in which a writer attends the French trial of a Senegalese woman accused of murdering her 15-month-old child. Read more
9
Decision to Leave
South Korean director Park Chan-wook ’s sensational black-widow noir romance, starring Tang Wei , keeps the viewer off-balance at every turn. Read more
8
Memoria
Tilda Swinton joins forces with Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul for an English-language, Colombia-set fable about a woman who can hear sounds that others don’t appear to. Read more
7
The Wonder
Haunting adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s story of divine possession, with Florence Pugh as a nurse who is sent to a rural Irish village to investigate a young girl who appears to be perfectly healthy despite not having eaten for months. Read more
6
The Fabelmans
Steven Spielberg has never been more personal than in this quasi-autobiographical film about a young Jewish kid called Sammy Fabelman, exploring his own childhood and young adulthood. Read more
5
RRR
Multilingual, pan-Indian, historical-action-romance blockbuster set in the 1920s, following a pair of real-life revolutionaries as they take on the might of the British Raj. Read more
4
Hit the Road
Beautifully composed debut feature from Panah Panahi, the son of jailed Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, this tense family drama is drenched in a subtle but urgent political meaning. Read more
3
The Quiet Girl
Deeply moving tale of rural Ireland in which a silent child is sent away to live with foster parents on a farm, in a gem of a film from first-time feature director Colm Bairéad. Read more
2
Tár
Demanding, passionate, mercurial, brilliant: Cate Blanchett stars as the fictional principal conductor of a major German orchestra in a sensational and hypnotic film that tracks her increasingly intense state of mind as she heads for a creative breakthrough or a crackup. Read the full review
1
Aftersun
Father-daughter bonding drama starring Paul Mescal and nine-year-old Francesca Corio, attempting to navigate post-divorce family life in a Turkish beach resort. A brilliant debut feature from Charlotte Wells. Read the full review
