Sight & Sound, the BFI’s international film magazine, today named Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma as the Best Film of 2018 in one of the most anticipated and respected critics’ opinion poll: Sight & Sound’s Films of the Year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar®-winning Phantom Thread is in second place, followed by Lee Chang-dong’s Burning in third.

After directing English language award-winners Gravity and Children of Men, Roma is a return to Alfonso Cuarón’s native Spanish. A sumptuous black-and-white ode to the woman who shaped his early life, Roma is already being tipped as an awards season favorite, after wins at the New York Critics Circle Awards and the BIFAs (Best International Independent Film). The film had its UK premiere at the 2018 BFI London Film Festival as the Journey Gala and won the Golden Lion after its World Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

Over 160 critics, programmers and academics from around the world voted for their top five film, TV and artists’ moving image releases from the year.

2018 Sight & Sound’s Top 20 Films

1 Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
2 Phantom Thread – Paul Thomas Anderson
3 Burning – Lee Chang-dong
4 Cold War –Paweł Pawlikowski
5 First Reformed – Paul Schrader
6 Leave No Trace – Debra Granik
7 The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos
= You Were Never Really Here – Lynne Ramsay
9 Happy as Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher
= Zama – Lucrecia Martel
11 The Image Book – Jean-Luc Godard
12 If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins
13 BlacKkKlansman – Spike Lee
14 The Other Side of the Wind – Orson Welles
= Shirkers – Sandi Tan
= Shoplifters – Hirokazu Kore-eda
17 Sorry to Bother You – Boots Riley
18 Faces Places – Agnès Varda, J.R.
= The Rider – Chloe Zhao
= Western – Valeska Grisebach
21 La Flor – Mariano Llinás
= Hereditary – Ari Aster
= High Life – Claire Denis
= Isle of Dogs – Wes Anderson
= Madeline’s Madeline – Josephine Decker
= 120 BPM – Robin Campillo
= Transit – Christian Petzold