Question 1

Which list is this, and who picked the films?

Accepted Answer

It is the 10th anniversary edition (2007) of AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies. The American Film Institute sent a ballot of 400 nominated American films to about 1,500 directors, actors, critics and historians, who chose the final 100. It updates the original 1998 list. Ranks and titles here match AFI's published list. This site is an independent fan tool and is not affiliated with AFI.

Question 2

What changed from the 1998 list?

Accepted Answer

The 2007 vote added 23 films that were not on the 1998 list, including The General, Intolerance, Nashville, Sullivan's Travels, Cabaret, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story and Do the Right Thing. Raging Bull jumped from 24th to 4th and Vertigo from 61st to 9th, while Citizen Kane stayed at number one.

Question 3

Why are there no foreign-language films?

Accepted Answer

AFI's list only covers American feature films, so there are no foreign-language classics such as Seven Samurai or Bicycle Thieves. If you want a world cinema list, Sight and Sound's critics' poll is the usual place to look. This checklist sticks to one list with a clear source so your score means the same thing as your friend's.

Question 4

How do the ranks and the popcorn bucket work?

Accepted Answer

There are 10 ranks based on films seen: 0 Just Bought Popcorn, 1-5 Trailer Watcher, 6-10 Weekend Moviegoer, 11-20 Casual Film Fan, 21-30 Budding Cinephile, 31-40 Cinema Regular, 41-55 Classic Film Explorer, 56-70 Cinephile, 71-85 Walking Film History, 86-100 AFI 100 Champion. Each rank makes the bear's popcorn bucket bigger. Films marked "Want to see" do not count toward your rank.

Question 5

How long would it take to watch all 100 films?

Accepted Answer

About 211 hours and 24 minutes using the original theatrical running times, or roughly 8 days and 19 hours without a break. The longest is Gone with the Wind (about 238 minutes) and the shortest is Duck Soup (about 68 minutes). Running times differ a little between cuts and restorations, so treat them as approximate.

Question 6

How are my "next 3 films" picked?

Accepted Answer

Films you marked "Want to see" come first, shortest first. Next come unseen films from the decade you have watched most (say, 1980 onwards), shortest first, and after that the highest-ranked films you have not seen. If you have not ticked anything, it starts with Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Casablanca.

Question 7

How does comparing with a friend work? Is my list stored anywhere?

Accepted Answer

Copy link puts your ticks into a short code at the end of the address (?r=...). When a friend opens it they see how many films you share, and which ones only one of you has seen, updating as they tick their own. Nothing is sent to a server: your ticks live only in this browser and in the link you share.

Question 8

What size are the images?

Accepted Answer

The feed card is 1080×1350px (4:5), so Instagram will not crop it. The story card is 1080×1920px (9:16) with space left at the top and bottom for Instagram's own buttons. On a phone you can use Share to send it straight to an app.

Rank	Title	Director	Year	Min
1	Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941	119
2	The Godfather	Francis Ford Coppola	1972	175
3	Casablanca	Michael Curtiz	1942	102
4	Raging Bull	Martin Scorsese	1980	129
5	Singin' in the Rain	Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen	1952	103
6	Gone with the Wind	Victor Fleming	1939	238
7	Lawrence of Arabia	David Lean	1962	222
8	Schindler's List	Steven Spielberg	1993	195
9	Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock	1958	128
10	The Wizard of Oz	Victor Fleming	1939	102
11	City Lights	Charlie Chaplin	1931	87
12	The Searchers	John Ford	1956	119
13	Star Wars	George Lucas	1977	121
14	Psycho	Alfred Hitchcock	1960	109
15	2001: A Space Odyssey	Stanley Kubrick	1968	142
16	Sunset Boulevard	Billy Wilder	1950	110
17	The Graduate	Mike Nichols	1967	106
18	The General	Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman	1926	75
19	On the Waterfront	Elia Kazan	1954	108
20	It's a Wonderful Life	Frank Capra	1946	130
21	Chinatown	Roman Polanski	1974	130
22	Some Like It Hot	Billy Wilder	1959	121
23	The Grapes of Wrath	John Ford	1940	129
24	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	Steven Spielberg	1982	115
25	To Kill a Mockingbird	Robert Mulligan	1962	129
26	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	Frank Capra	1939	129
27	High Noon	Fred Zinnemann	1952	85
28	All About Eve	Joseph L. Mankiewicz	1950	138
29	Double Indemnity	Billy Wilder	1944	107
30	Apocalypse Now	Francis Ford Coppola	1979	147
31	The Maltese Falcon	John Huston	1941	100
32	The Godfather Part II	Francis Ford Coppola	1974	202
33	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest	Miloš Forman	1975	133
34	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	David Hand	1937	83
35	Annie Hall	Woody Allen	1977	93
36	The Bridge on the River Kwai	David Lean	1957	161
37	The Best Years of Our Lives	William Wyler	1946	172
38	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre	John Huston	1948	126
39	Dr. Strangelove	Stanley Kubrick	1964	95
40	The Sound of Music	Robert Wise	1965	174
41	King Kong	Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack	1933	100
42	Bonnie and Clyde	Arthur Penn	1967	111
43	Midnight Cowboy	John Schlesinger	1969	113
44	The Philadelphia Story	George Cukor	1940	112
45	Shane	George Stevens	1953	118
46	It Happened One Night	Frank Capra	1934	105
47	A Streetcar Named Desire	Elia Kazan	1951	122
48	Rear Window	Alfred Hitchcock	1954	112
49	Intolerance	D. W. Griffith	1916	163
50	The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring	Peter Jackson	2001	178
51	West Side Story	Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise	1961	152
52	Taxi Driver	Martin Scorsese	1976	114
53	The Deer Hunter	Michael Cimino	1978	183
54	MAS*H	Robert Altman	1970	116
55	North by Northwest	Alfred Hitchcock	1959	136
56	Jaws	Steven Spielberg	1975	124
57	Rocky	John G. Avildsen	1976	120
58	The Gold Rush	Charlie Chaplin	1925	95
59	Nashville	Robert Altman	1975	160
60	Duck Soup	Leo McCarey	1933	68
61	Sullivan's Travels	Preston Sturges	1941	90
62	American Graffiti	George Lucas	1973	110
63	Cabaret	Bob Fosse	1972	124
64	Network	Sidney Lumet	1976	121
65	The African Queen	John Huston	1951	105
66	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Steven Spielberg	1981	115
67	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?	Mike Nichols	1966	131
68	Unforgiven	Clint Eastwood	1992	131
69	Tootsie	Sydney Pollack	1982	116
70	A Clockwork Orange	Stanley Kubrick	1971	136
71	Saving Private Ryan	Steven Spielberg	1998	169
72	The Shawshank Redemption	Frank Darabont	1994	142
73	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	George Roy Hill	1969	110
74	The Silence of the Lambs	Jonathan Demme	1991	118
75	In the Heat of the Night	Norman Jewison	1967	109
76	Forrest Gump	Robert Zemeckis	1994	142
77	All the President's Men	Alan J. Pakula	1976	138
78	Modern Times	Charlie Chaplin	1936	87
79	The Wild Bunch	Sam Peckinpah	1969	145
80	The Apartment	Billy Wilder	1960	125
81	Spartacus	Stanley Kubrick	1960	197
82	Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans	F. W. Murnau	1927	94
83	Titanic	James Cameron	1997	195
84	Easy Rider	Dennis Hopper	1969	95
85	A Night at the Opera	Sam Wood	1935	92
86	Platoon	Oliver Stone	1986	120
87	12 Angry Men	Sidney Lumet	1957	96
88	Bringing Up Baby	Howard Hawks	1938	102
89	The Sixth Sense	M. Night Shyamalan	1999	107
90	Swing Time	George Stevens	1936	103
91	Sophie's Choice	Alan J. Pakula	1982	150
92	Goodfellas	Martin Scorsese	1990	146
93	The French Connection	William Friedkin	1971	104
94	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino	1994	154
95	The Last Picture Show	Peter Bogdanovich	1971	118
96	Do the Right Thing	Spike Lee	1989	120
97	Blade Runner	Ridley Scott	1982	117
98	Yankee Doodle Dandy	Michael Curtiz	1942	126
99	Toy Story	John Lasseter	1995	81
100	Ben-Hur	William Wyler	1959	212

How Many of the AFI Top 100 Movies Have You Seen?

The full AFI top 100 movies list (2007)

The list by decade

More things to try

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