This list is compiled by the Guardian film team, with all films released in the UK during 2022 in contention. Check in every weekday to see our next picks, and please share your own favourite films of 2022 in the comments below.
Table of Contents
50
Compartment No 6
Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen directs this answer to Before Sunrise, about an archaeology student who shares a train compartment with a boorish Russian; the pair connect despite their differences. Read the full review
49
Top Gun: Maverick
Tom Cruise returns almost four decades on for another bout of speed and need: this time he is the mentor to a new generation of navy fighter pilots, led by Miles Teller, playing the son of Maverick’s late wingman, Goose. Read the full review
48
Paris, 13th District
The latest film from Rust and Bone director Jacques Audiard, here putting together a short story collection of sexual encounters and relationships in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, shot in tough black-and-white. Read the full review
47
Happening
Golden Lion-winning abortion drama, more relevant than ever, from director Audrey Diwan; a study of a woman (played by Anamaria Vartolomei) who becomes pregnant in early-60s, pre-legalisation France. Read the full review
46
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Entertaining second dose of Rian Johnson’s labyrinthine crime mystery, with Daniel Craig on good form as Hercule Poirot-esque detective Benoit Blanc, here investigating a murder-themed party that turns deadly. Read the full review
45
Vortex
Split-screen dementia drama from Argentine provocateur Gaspar Noé, starring Dario Argento and Françoise Lebrun as an elderly couple whose lives are dogged by the latter’s cognitive decline. Read the full review
44
The Woman King
Stirring period epic starring Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, a brigade of female warriors in west Africa who are attempting to see off threats from the Oyo empire as well as from slave-buying colonialists. Read the full review
43
Brian and Charles
David Earl and Chris Hayward’s story of an inventor’s relationship with his creation blends Caractacus Potts with Victor Frankenstein to heartwarming effect. Read the full review
42
We (Nous)
French-Senegalese film-maker Alice Diop offers a sensitive portrayal of the disparate communities that live along one of Paris’s commuter rail lines, in a documentary predating her acclaimed fiction feature debut, Saint Omer. Read the full review
41
Everything Went Fine
André Dussollier and Sophie Marceau are outstanding in François Ozon’s wonderfully observed story about a father and daughter whose tricky relationship is upended when he asks for her help to die. Read the full review
40
Benediction
Terence Davies’s account of the life of Siegfried Sassoon (played by Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi in younger/older versions), tracing his career from lionised war poet to unhappy later life. Read the full review
39
Prayers for the Stolen
A heart-rending study of the traumatising life experience of a Mexican woman trying to ensure her daughter escapes the attentions of rapists and narcos who can apparently operate with impunity. Read the full review
38
Small Body
Mysterious fable from Italian director Laura Samani, about a woman desperate to revive her stillborn baby who heads off on a quest to find the church that may be able to accomplish it. Read the full review
37
Great Freedom
Intriguing German drama about a former concentration camp inmate imprisoned after the war for gay sex acts, and who develops a complex relationship with his straight cellmate. Read the full review
36
A Banquet
Social-comment body horror from debut feature director Ruth Paxton, with Sienna Guillory as the apparently perfect single mother with two daughters, one of whom develops a mysterious eating disorder. Read the full review
35
All Quiet on the Western Front
Anti-war nightmare of bloodshed and chaos where teenage boys quickly find themselves caught up in the ordeal of trench warfare, in a German-language adaptation of the first world war novel. Read the full review
34
Lingui, the Sacred Bonds
Chadian auteur Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s quiet fable, about a woman torn between social proprieties and respecting her daughter’s decision to get an abortion. Read the full review
33
All That Breathes
Two Indian brothers dedicate themselves to rescuing birds that are being poisoned by pollution in this complex and quietly beautiful film. Read the full review
32
Corsage
Vicky Krieps puts in a star turn as lonely, patronised Elizabeth of Austria in Marie Kreutzer’s austere drama that functions as a cry of anger from the pedestal-prison of an empress. Read the full review
31
Crimes of the Future
As he did with 90s hit Crash, David Cronenberg’s horror sensation creates a bizarre new society of sicko sybarites where pain is the ultimate pleasure and “surgery is the new sex”. Read the full review
30
The Worst Person in the World
Thelma director Joachim Trier comes up with an unexpectedly moving drama about a twentysomething woman (played by Renate Reinsve in a star-making performance) as she navigates relationships and jobs at a tricky period in life. Read the full review
29
The Souvenir Part II
Second half of Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical drama, with Honor Swinton Byrne as film student Julie as she abandons her social issue documentary in favour of making her own autobiographical memoir. Read the full review
28
Cow
American Honey director Andrea Arnold’s meaty slice of bovine socio-realism, detailing the life of dairy cows with unflinching and empathic precision. Read the full review
27
No Bears
Complex metafiction of fear in which now-jailed director Jafar Panahi plays a version of himself, forced to shoot his new film in a town near the border with Turkey. Read the full review
26
White Noise
Don DeLillo’s novel of campus larks and eco dread gets an elegant, droll film treatment from Noah Baumbach, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. Read the full review
25
The Gravedigger’s Wife
Gentle, funny drama of a man seeking money for his spouse’s operation and his sick spouse from Somali-born director Khadar Ayderus Ahmed. Read the full review
24
Fire of Love
Romantic portrait of passionate, doomed volcanologists embraces the mythology around Maurice and Katia Krafft, the scientists who died in the 1991 Mount Unzen disaster. Read the full review
23
Descendant
Powerful documentary on the legacy of slavery showing how an illegal slave ship led to the creation of an Alabama community of inherited trauma but also defiance. Read the full review
22
Nitram
Deeply disturbing drama about mass killer Martin Bryant which shies away from depicting the Port Arthur massacre itself – but outstanding performances mean it is still a highly unsettling story. Read the full review
21
The Innocents
Creepy-kid horror from Norwegian director Eskil Vogt (co-writer of The Worst Person in the World), about two young sisters who make friends with other children who apparently possess supernatural powers. Read the full review