What is the best German movie of all time?

From Weimar-era expressionism to New German Cinema's reckoning with history and contemporary international award winners, Germany has produced a strikingly diverse body of filmmaking. Cast your vote!

1. 1
   Metropolis

   Fritz Lang's 1927 visionary silent sci-fi epic depicting a dystopian city split between a luxurious upper world and an underground worker society, one of the most influential films in history.
   1000pts
2. 2
   The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

   Robert Wiene's 1920 Expressionist horror landmark — told by a mental patient about a sinister somnambulist — the defining text of German Expressionism and a founding nightmare of cinema.
   812pts
3. 3
   Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

   Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 melodrama about an elderly German cleaning woman who falls in love with a young Moroccan immigrant, a fierce critique of racial prejudice and social conformism.
   494pts
4. 4
   Das Boot

   Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 claustrophobic submarine epic following a German U-boat crew through the brutal Atlantic campaign, the most expensive German film ever made at the time.
   494pts
5. 5
   Downfall

   Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 devastating account of Hitler's final days in the Berlin bunker as the Third Reich collapsed, Bruno Ganz delivering one of cinema's most controversial performances.
   384pts
6. 6
   Fitzcarraldo

   Werner Herzog's 1982 mad epic following a visionary lunatic who drags a full-sized steamship over a jungle mountain to fund an opera house in the Amazon, partly the story of its own insane production.
   384pts
7. 7
   M

   Fritz Lang's 1931 groundbreaking sound thriller about a child murderer hunted by both police and the criminal underworld, with Peter Lorre's riveting, tragic performance.
   231pts
8. 8
   Aguirre, the Wrath of God

   Werner Herzog's 1972 descent into madness with Klaus Kinski as a conquistador who commandeers a raft on the Amazon and declares himself emperor, shot in the actual Peruvian jungle.
   231pts
9. 9
   The Lives of Others

   Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 Oscar-winning drama about a Stasi officer surveilling a playwright in East Berlin who begins to question his own allegiance.
   231pts
10. 10
    Nosferatu

    F.W. Murnau's 1922 unauthorized Dracula adaptation, the founding document of vampire cinema, with Max Schreck's Count Orlok as cinema's most terrifying screen monster.
    231pts
11. 11
    The Tin Drum

    Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 adaptation of Günter Grass's Nobel Prize-winning novel about a boy who decides to stop growing at age three, a surreal allegory of the Nazi rise in Danzig.
    1pts
12. 12
    Wings of Desire

    Wim Wenders's 1987 poetic fantasy about angels invisibly watching over the divided city of Berlin who yearn to become human, a shimmering meditation on mortality, love, and history.
    1pts
13. 13
    Run Lola Run

    Tom Tykwer's 1998 breathless thriller sending its flame-haired heroine through three parallel realities in 20 minutes each to save her boyfriend's life, a kinetic showcase of pure cinema.
    1pts
14. 14
    The Marriage of Maria Braun

    Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1979 allegory of West Germany's postwar Wirtschaftswunder through the story of a woman who builds a life of ruthless pragmatism while waiting for her imprisoned husband.
    1pts
15. 15
    Good Bye, Lenin!

    Wolfgang Becker's 2003 bittersweet comedy about a son who preserves the illusion of East Germany for his bedridden mother after reunification, a tender portrait of a vanished world.
    1pts