These lists are sourced as follows: Village Voice 2005-2016, The Ringer onwards, except as noted, and all of these lists are by NYC release year.
2005
- L'Intrus (Claire Denis)
- Caché (Michael Haneke)
- The World (Jia Zhangke)
- Pulse (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
- The Holy Girl (Lucrecia Martel)
- Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
- Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- Head-On (Fatih Akın)
- A History of Violence (David Cronenberg)
- Stealth (Rob Cohen)
2007 [IndieWire]
- Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
- Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
- Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)
- There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
- The Last Winter (Larry Fessenden)
- Manufactured Landscapes (Jennifer Baichwall)
- Offside (Jafar Panahi)
- Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer & Peter Djigirr)
- We Own the Night (James Gray)
2008 [IndieWire]
- In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
- Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
- Ballast (Lance Hammer)
- La France (Serge Bozon)
- The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
- Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
- The Unforeseen (Laura Dunn)
- Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
- Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
- Profit motive and the whispering wind (John Gianvito)
2009
- Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
- Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu)
- 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
- A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
- Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
- 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
- You, the Living (Roy Andersson)
- Birdsong (Albert Serra)
- A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy)
- Lorna's Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Decade [IndieWire]
- The Son (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
- L'Intrus (Claire Denis)
- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
- Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
- Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr Béla and Hranitzky Ágnes)
- Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
- Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
- Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay)
2010
- Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio)
- Everyone Else (Maren Ade)
- Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
- The Social Network (David Fincher)
- Sweetgrass (Ilisa Barbash & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)
- The Ghost Writer (Roman Polański)
- Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
- The Anchorage (C. W. Winter & Anders Edström)
- Unstoppable (Tony Scott)
- Buried (Rodrigo Cortés)
2011
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
- The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
- Attack the Block (Joe Cornish)
- Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
- The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu (Andrei Ujică)
- Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzmán)
- House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello)
- Historias Extraordinarias (Mariano Llinás)
- A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)
2012
- This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
- The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Kill List (Ben Wheatley)
- Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
- Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari)
- Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
- The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
- Two Years at Sea (Ben Rivers)
- Killer Joe (William Friedkin)
- Starlet (Sean Baker)
2013
- The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
- Bastards (Claire Denis)
- Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
- Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
- Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
- Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
- Room 237 (Rodney Ascher)
- Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
- A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
- Viola (Matías Piñeiro)
2014
- A Field in England (Ben Wheatley)
- Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
- The Immigrant (James Gray)
- Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Locke (Steven Knight)
- Manakamana (Stephanie Spray & Pacho Velez)
- Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt)
- Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
- Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
- Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (Denis Côté)
2015
- Phoenix (Christian Petzold)
- The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
- The Princess of France (Matías Piñeiro)
- Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
- P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)
- The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson)
- Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
- Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)
- Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)
- Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs)
2016
- Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
- Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)
- Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
- Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
- Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari)
- Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)
- Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)
- Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- The Other Side (Roberto Minervini)
- Silence (Martin Scorsese)
2021
- Drive My Car/Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
- Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
- Azor (Andreas Fontana)
- Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
- The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)
- Annette (Leos Carax)
- Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
- Wife of a Spy (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
- The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
- Saint Maud (Rose Glass)
2022
- Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
- Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
- Nope (Jordan Peele)
- Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
- Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
- Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
- All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
- The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
- EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
- Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)
Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
2023
- Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)
- The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
- Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
- May December (Todd Haynes)
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)
- All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh)
- The Killer (David Fincher)
- Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
- The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki Hayao)
- Afire (Christian Petzold)
Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)