What is the best French movie of all time?

By YPB Team

From the New Wave's radical rule-breaking to contemporary Cannes contenders, French cinema has produced some of the world's most emotionally devastating films. Cast your vote!

The Grand Illusion

Jean Renoir's 1937 anti-war masterpiece set in a German POW camp, celebrating human solidarity across class and national divides — the first non-English film nominated for Best Picture.

1000pts

The 400 Blows

François Truffaut's semiautobiographical 1959 New Wave classic following a misunderstood Parisian boy's drift into petty crime, ending on the iconic freeze-frame at the ocean.

872pts

La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz's explosive 1995 black-and-white portrait of three young men from the Paris suburbs in the 24 hours following a riot, searing in its urgency and relevance.

681pts

Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville's crushing 1969 portrait of the French Resistance — grim, procedural, and morally merciless — suppressed for decades before rediscovery.

681pts

Rififi

Jules Dassin's 1955 heist noir featuring the definitive 28-minute silent robbery sequence, the template for virtually every heist film that followed.

545pts

Eyes Without a Face

Georges Franju's 1960 horror poem about a surgeon who disfigures young women to restore his daughter's destroyed face, hauntingly beautiful and deeply unsettling.

545pts

A Prophet

Jacques Audiard's visceral 2009 prison epic charting a young Arab man's brutal self-education inside a French jail, widely seen as one of the defining crime films of its era.

436pts

Blue Is the Warmest Colour

Abdellatif Kechiche's Palme d'Or-winning 2013 coming-of-age love story following a young woman's intense relationship across years, praised for its emotional rawness.

272pts

Au Revoir les Enfants

Louis Malle's autobiographical 1987 wartime drama about the friendship between a French schoolboy and a Jewish child hiding in a Catholic boarding school during the Occupation.

272pts

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Céline Sciamma's 2019 period romance about a painter and her subject falling in love on an isolated Breton island, shot in natural light with exquisite restraint.

272pts

The Intouchables

Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano's 2011 feel-good hit about an unlikely friendship between a quadriplegic aristocrat and his street-smart caretaker, France's highest-grossing film for years.

272pts

Playtime

Jacques Tati's 1967 architectural comedy-ballet — filmed on a giant set nicknamed Tativille — a meditative satire on modern urban life shot entirely in 70mm.

272pts

Breathless

Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 New Wave landmark about a small-time crook on the run, revolutionizing cinema with jump cuts, improvised dialogue, and Belmondo's magnetic charm.

0pts

The Rules of the Game

Jean Renoir's razor-sharp 1939 social satire set at a country estate, considered by critics one of the greatest films ever made and a brutal X-ray of class hypocrisy.

0pts

Amélie

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's whimsical 2001 romantic comedy about a shy Montmartre waitress who secretly orchestrates happiness for others, becoming France's most beloved modern export.