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This article took a good deal of effort by many people to reach its current form. If you would like to add a film to this article, please follow the guidelines below. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in the film being removed from the list.
Keep the entry short. The most relevant thing to mention is how the film is considered to be the greatest. People can follow the link to the film to find out more about it.
The film MUST be cited as THE BEST in the category where it is being listed. It is not enough for a citation to say "one of the best", or "considered by many". The citation can be from national and international surveys and polls of critics and the public. Editorial picks by the staff of a periodical or website are not sufficiently broad in their scope to be included.
Citations for the best films from a specific country should either be from sources from that country or from world-wide recognition. For example, it is not enough to be the favorite Italian film in America.
This article strives to be NPOV about OTHER PEOPLE's POV. The POV of editors does not matter.
Footnotes, Footnotes, Footnotes. If you don't want editors immediately deleting your work, please provide a link to the page where you found the citation.
This article was nominated fordeletion. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination:
I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but why is Fellini's movie 8½ described using 'frac' i.e. with{{frac|8|1|2}} (8+1⁄2)?
This seems to offer little improvement over the actual Unicode 'half' character ('½') which is used in the wikilink anyway. If a user's system doesn't support ½, then it won't be able to open the link to that article – though I suppose in that edge case, you could argue that at least this article might display OK even if the link doesn't work.
If Unicode is a stretch, how about an HTML entity? They've been a W3C recommendation since 1999, so unlikely to cause even the oldest of web-capable devices to break a sweat. That would make the film's title8½ in the source, which is pretty human-readable if you can't have "8½".
I wouldn't have noticed if 'frac' worked. But on my Mac (running Firefox on Mac OS 11 Big Sur) the text appeared initially as "8 1/2", then after I looked at the source and subsequently cancelled, it started appering as "8+1/2"!
We have a couple of polls covering the 21st century, one from 2016 and another from 2025. I'm of the view the criteria is too narrow: the 2016 poll especially is essentially a best film of the decade poll, and we wouldn't have a category for the 1990s and so on. Basically none of the polls we document restrict the period; so the best film of all-time covers all of film-making history up to the time of the poll, best horror film covers the entirety of the genre, best French film covers all French films etc. Personally, I believe this list works best without restricting periods the considered and the 21st century polls should be removed.Betty Logan (talk)18:27, 27 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For some reason, the "Russia" section lists a Soviet film. Perhaps it should be moved to the "Soviet Union" section. The best Soviet films are presented here, including those chosen as the best after the collapse of the USSR.
"The films 'Brother 2,' 'The Island,' and 'Fortress of War' topped the ranking of the best Russian films of the 21st century, according to a survey by the Kino Mail.ru service. A copy of this study, prepared for Russian Cinema Day, is available to TASS.
"The top 50 Russian films of the 21st century were topped by Alexei Balabanov's crime drama 'Brother 2.' The second film about Danila Bagrov, an implacable fighter for truth and defender of the weak, was released in 2000 and eventually gained cult status, cementing Sergei Bodrov Jr. as a national film hero.
Second place in the ranking went to 'The Island,' directed by Pavel Lungin, starring Pyotr Mamonov as a righteous elder.
Rounding out the top three was Alexander Kott's 'Fortress of War', which reconstructs the chronicle of the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War"86.54.29.65 (talk)11:37, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is too narrow for inclusion. Russia was a part of the USSR so i don't see a problem with a Soviet film listed as the best Russian film. But if you really want a film solely from the Russian Federation, then the poll also should include films made in the 90s, not just XXI century. The original "Brother" would be a lot likely to be ranked highest in such poll than the sequel. Actually, it is the highest among Post-Soviet Russian films in the poll that is already mentioned in the article.~2025-31917-50 (talk)00:28, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell,My Friend Ivan Lapshin (the only film listed under the Russia entry) was made by a company based in Russia, and filmed in Russian. Those criteria would ordinarily be sufficient to satisfy the national identity of a film for any other country. Obviously, there is a significant overlap between Russian and Soviet films. If a source uses "Russian" as a collective term for Soviet era films it's something we can probably correct, but the distinction is not something we really need to concern ourselves with, though; it's down to the sources to make those types of distinctions.Betty Logan (talk)10:18, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Um. In that case, why create the "USSR" section? All the films there are in Russian. So, by your logic, they should be moved to "Russia."
Although, personally, I think this "language" principle is completely pointless. You wouldn't move films from "USA" to "United Kingdom" just because they're in English. Or New Zealand films. Not only do they share the same language as the United Kingdom, but the king is also the head of state.
Location shouldn't be discussed at all. Otherwise, things could get messy. For example, half of Hollywood films will likely have to be moved to other countries' sections, since they were often not filmed in the US, and the production companies were not located in the US for "tax optimization."
Nowhere have I said that a film should be treated as Russian if it was filmed in Russian. By my logic, the national identity of a film is left to the sources determine, which is a position consistent withWP:V andWP:NOR.Betty Logan (talk)08:00, 16 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There was no such distinction back then. Everything was "Soviet films." After the collapse of the USSR, the seceding republics began to separate "their" films, which is acceptable (although formally it's not, as the USSR was a single/united country). But modern Russia is the legal successor to the USSR, so even such an ambiguous reason is absent. The RSFSR (the same Soviet republic that was renamed the Russian Federation after collapse of the USSR) didn't have its own Communist Party, as it was believed that, due to its superior population, the RSFSR would have greater representation in the Communist Party of the entire USSR, and that this would be sufficient. For example, the RSFSR wasn't among the republics that signed the UN Charter, unlike, say, Ukraine or Belarus. For a similar reason—the USSR signed on behalf of the RSFSR. This is precisely why, before the collapse of the USSR, "Russia" simply referred to a region, not a separate country.
And the source used this word as if someone were saying "Texas movie," meaning a region, not a separate country. But no one would add individual US states here because of this.
Why it was suddenly singled out in this particular case is beyond me.
It's irrelevant what the distinction was back then. The Soviet Union has ended and the former member states are now countries with their own distinct film industries. If the United States broke up into different countries then maybe it would be legitimate for writers to view Hollywood films as Californian films. It is down to reliable sources to make these judgments, not Wikipedia editors.Betty Logan (talk)15:00, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, let me repeat: if, after the country's collapse, a decision was made to categorize films by new countries, then this should be done in all cases. My complaint is precisely because the criteria differ in identical cases. If the rule "after the country's collapse, retroactively categorize films by new countries" applies, then the "USSR" section should be removed altogether and the films should be moved to "Russia" (or whatever country the film is now assigned to). Or, if the categorization is still based on countries existing at the time of filming, then "Russia" should be removed and moved to "USSR."
We abide by the sources; anything else would beWP:Original research. In this case the source has made a reasonable decision about what counts as a Russian film. If other lists exclude older, Soviet, films from Russian lists then that is reasonable too.Betty Logan (talk)23:20, 25 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another poll with the same winner for the best Ukrainian film
