# What is the best French movie of all time?

> 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!

*By YPB Team · Published June 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-french-movie-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Grand Illusion** — score 1000/1000
   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.
2. **The 400 Blows** — score 825/1000
   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.
3. **La Haine** — score 562/1000
   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.
4. **Army of Shadows** — score 562/1000
   Jean-Pierre Melville's crushing 1969 portrait of the French Resistance — grim, procedural, and morally merciless — suppressed for decades before rediscovery.
5. **Rififi** — score 375/1000
   Jules Dassin's 1955 heist noir featuring the definitive 28-minute silent robbery sequence, the template for virtually every heist film that followed.
6. **Eyes Without a Face** — score 375/1000
   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.
7. **A Prophet** — score 225/1000
   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.
8. **Blue Is the Warmest Colour** — score 1/1000
   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.
9. **Au Revoir les Enfants** — score 1/1000
   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.
10. **Portrait of a Lady on Fire** — score 1/1000
   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.
11. **The Intouchables** — score 1/1000
   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.
12. **Playtime** — score 1/1000
   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.
13. **Amélie** — score 1/1000
   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.
14. **Breathless** — score 1/1000
   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.
15. **The Rules of the Game** — score 1/1000
   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.

Tags: movies, france, classics, all-time