Anna Coatman
Writer & Editor
UK
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Morvern Callar | 2001 | Lynne Ramsay |
| The Gold Diggers | 1983 | Sally Potter |
| Poor Cow | 1967 | Ken Loach |
| The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open | 2019 | Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn |
| Diary of a Pregnant Woman | 1958 | Agnès Varda |
| Harlan County, USA | 1976 | Barbara Kopple |
| Céline and Julie Go Boating | 1974 | Jacques Rivette |
| Nightcleaners | 1975 | |
| Babymother | 1998 | Julian Henriques |
| The Tiger Who Came to Tea | 2019 | Robin Shaw |
Comments
I know that I have not seen all of the “greatest films of all time” yet – and that I never will. In fact, in the (almost) three years since I had my son, I’ve been watching fewer films than ever (unless you count watching the children’s animations We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The Tiger Who Came to Tea x 1000, plus innumerable YouTube videos of trains).
Tillie Olsen wrote, “Literary history and the present are dark with silences.” The same can be said of cinema – think of all the second features that were never funded, and the potential filmmakers who never even set foot in a film school. Even if I had seen all of the films that do exist, I know that some of the greatest films of all time have been lost or destroyed, are not distributed, have not been made yet, were never made, or will never be made.
“Greatest” is a loaded word, in any case. I have chosen ten films that are meaningful to me (at this moment in time) and that I hope as many people as possible will get to see.