A companion piece to Dave Vis' list of Letterboxd's official top 250 films of all-time, which excludes documentaries from consideration.
Ranked by average user rating. This list was extracted from here. Updated once a month. This is an official list progress project on all-time stats pages for Pro and Patron users. Expanded from a top 100 to a top 250 on June 27th, 2021, on the list's 3-year anniversary.
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ELIGIBILITY RULES:
• Documentaries must be feature-length (45+ minutes), with a theatrical and/or festival release in its entirety.
• TV series, miniseries, and episodes are excluded but docs listed as 'TV movie' on IMDb are eligible. Exceptions made for series and episodes that also had a limited theatrical release.
• No featurettes unless…
A companion piece to Dave Vis' list of Letterboxd's official top 250 films of all-time, which excludes documentaries from consideration.
Ranked by average user rating. This list was extracted from here. Updated once a month. This is an official list progress project on all-time stats pages for Pro and Patron users. Expanded from a top 100 to a top 250 on June 27th, 2021, on the list's 3-year anniversary.
~~
ELIGIBILITY RULES:
• Documentaries must be feature-length (45+ minutes), with a theatrical and/or festival release in its entirety.
• TV series, miniseries, and episodes are excluded but docs listed as 'TV movie' on IMDb are eligible. Exceptions made for series and episodes that also had a limited theatrical release.
• No featurettes unless theatrically distributed, even if feature-length (featurettes are marked as 'Video' on IMDb, such as 'making of' docs).
• In an attempt to combat unintentional fan manipulation, all music-adjacent films must have screened at a film festival to qualify.
• No standup comedy marked as a documentary, nor any stage shows. Exceptions may be made for borderline exceptions.
• Skateboarding compilations are excluded.
• There is a 1,000 minimum ratings threshold.
If I've excluded something you think deserves re-consideration please argue its case.
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STATS:
Top Decade: 2010s (76 films)
Top Decade, 20th Century only: 1990s (31 films)
Top Year: 2019 (12 films, by premiere year)
Top Year, 20th Century only: 1984 (5 films, by premiere year)
Newest Film: Bray Wyatt: Becoming Immortal (2024)
Oldest Film: Häxan (1922)
Longest Film: Shoah (566 mins)
Shortest Film: Sink or Swim (48 mins)
Oscar Nominations: 45 (between 38 films. Woodstock and Flee were nominated for three awards; the former for Best Film Editing and Best Sound, and the latter for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature, both alongside Best Documentary Feature. Honeyland, and Collective were nominated for two awards; both for Best International Feature as well as Best Documentary Feature. Hoop Dreams and Waltz With Bashir were nominated for Best Film Editing and Best Foreign Film respectively and not Best Documentary Feature. All other films were nominated in the doc category only.)
Oscar Wins: 16
Docs About Movies: 21
Concert Films: 17
Non-English Language Films: 79
Non-Verbal Films: 9
Films by Women Directors: 56
TOP DIRECTORS TALLY:
• Michael Apted – 7 films
• Agnès Varda – 7 films
• D. A. Pennebaker – 6 films
• Martin Scorsese – 6 films
• Werner Herzog – 5 films
• Jonas Mekas – 5 films
• Frederick Wiseman – 5 films
• Patricio Guzmán – 4 films
• Wang Bing – 3 films
• Eduardo Coutinho – 3 films
• Adam Curtis – 3 films
• Spike Lee – 3 films
• Chris Marker – 3 films
• Marlon Riggs – 3 films
• Jon Alpert – 2 films
• Don Argott – 2 films
• Yann Arthus-Bertrand – 2 films
• Les Blank – 2 films
• Jimmy Chin – 2 films
• Sean Evans – 2 films
• David France – 2 films
• Ron Fricke – 2 films
• Chris Hegedus – 2 films
• Asif Kapadia – 2 films
• Barbara Kopple – 2 films
• Albert Maysles – 2 films
• David Maysles – 2 films
• Errol Morris – 2 films
• Göran Olsson – 2 films
• Joshua Oppenheimer – 2 films
• Laura Poitras – 2 films
• Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi – 2 films
• Roger Waters – 2 films
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I also run top 50s of each year since 2016, the official top 250 films by women directors, and the official top 100 films by Black directors lists among others. See the Letterboxd 'Official List Network for more lists ranking films by Letterboxd member average rating.
