Film Comment has just released the results of its annual poll, and the results closely track those of the like-minded poll conducted by Sight & Sound a couple of weeks ago. Seven of the polls’ top 10 movies overlap, and their top three—Toni Erdmann, Moonlight, and Elle—are identical. (The first two are also featured in Slate’s Best Pop Culture Characters of 2016.) The Film Comment poll’s top 20 spread out a little after that and includes such notable entries as Manchester by the Sea, The Lobster, Love & Friendship, and Everybody Wants Some!! But still, there’s a high degree of consensus among critics on both sides of the Atlantic about what the most worthwhile movies of 2016 are.
The Film Comment poll also includes a list of the year’s best films that have not yet acquired a U.S. distributor, this one topped by Romanian Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada and Matías Piñeiro’s Hermia and Helena.
Here’s the Film Comment poll’s complete top 20 Films of 2016:
1. Toni Erdmann
2. Moonlight
3. Elle
4. Cemetery of Splendor
5. Certain Women
6. Paterson
7. Manchester by the Sea
8. Aquarius
9. Things to Come
10. No Home Movie
11. The Lobster
12. Right Now, Wrong Then
13. Love & Friendship
14. Cameraperson
15. Kaili Blues
16. The Handmaiden
17. Everybody Wants Some!!
18. The Fits
19. Neruda
20. The Other Side
