1951 – The River (Jean Renoir)
1955 – Voyage to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
1956 – A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
1957 – A King in New York (Charlie Chaplin)
1958 – Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
1959 – Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1960 – Sansho The Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1961 – Lola (Jacques Demy)
1962 – My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard)
1963 – Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard)
1964 – Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
1965 – Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
1966 – Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson)
1967 – Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
1968 – Chronicle of Anna-Magdalena Bach (Jean-Marie Straub)
1981 – Francisca (Manoel De Oliveira) / The Aviator’s Wife (Eric Rohmer)
1982 – A Room in Town (Jacques Demy)
1983 – L’Argent (Robert Bresson) / A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat)
1984 – Full Moon in Paris (Eric Rohmer)
1985 – Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard)
1986 – The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer)
1987 – Under the Sun of Satan (Maurice Pialat)
1988 – A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
1989 – Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee) / Palombella Rossa (Nanni Moretti)
1990 – The Little Criminal (Jacques Doillon) / Freeze, Die, Come to Life (Vitali Kanevski)
1991 – Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat)
1992 – Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
1993 – A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood)
1994 – Caro Diario (Nanni Moretti)
1995 – La Ceremonie (Claude Chabrol)
1996 – Crash (David Cronenberg)
1997 – Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano)
1998 – Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1999 – Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick)
2000 – Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin)
2001 – Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2002 – Choses Secrètes (Jean-Claude Brisseau) / Ten (Abbas Kiarostami)
2004 – Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2005 – Last Days (Gus Van Sant)
2006 – Coeurs (Alain Resnais) / Le Soileil (Aleksandr Sokurov)
2007 – Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
2008 – Redacted (Brian De Palma)
The full top ten lists for each year can be found here.
MORE:
Best 100 Movies Ever Made – TIME Magazine
500 Best Movies of All Time – Empire Online
American Film Institute’s Top 100 Movies of All Times
BAFTA Award for Best Film 1948 –
British Film Institute – Top 100 British Films of the 20th Century
Cahiers du Cinema: 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World
FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Best Film of the Year