[Editor's Note: In light of Sight & Sound's film poll, which, every decade, queries critics and directors the world over before arriving at a communal Top 10 list, we polled our own writers, who didn't partake in the project, but have bold, discerning, and provocative lists to share.]

I approached this project the exact same way I expect I would've handled being given a ballot in the actual Sight & Sound poll: by procrastinating until the very last second and making a lot of spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment rules to dictate how I could possibly whittle down dozens of films into a list of 10. (I know, everyone else probably would've said "hundreds of films," but I've always been a little cine-anorexic.)

The list of "obstructions" ought to be familiar to anyone with any exposure to this parlor game: one per decade, one per country, one per genre, one per boyfriend. But having willfully backed myself into the corner of having no more time on hand, I am forced to use a list I've already built elsewhere: the list of films I previously designated as favorites on MUBI. I like using that as a starting point because my choices there seem neither too conservative nor too outré (or at least both simultaneously), and I first started ticking them off as an exercise toward building a list of my 50 favorite movies. Plus, I limited myself to one choice per director.

The number of "nominees" there now stands at a slightly lower sum than that original goal (how have I still not picked a Bresson?!), but it still seems the best middle ground I can find between favoring my, well, favorites and giving movies I consider to be among "the greatest" their due. The only major wrench in this plan is that, of the 46 movies shortlisted, all but about a dozen of them are from the U.S. And nearly half are from the span between 1966 and 1976.

Well, no point dancing around statistics. A strategy is a strategy, so onward and upward, in chronological order:

Electrocuting an Elephant (Thomas Edison, 1903). Already it feels as though I'm headed down the wrong way of a one-way street. Ten slots and I give one to this minute-minus animal snuff film? Am I just trying to sidestep my misguided temptation to throw a vote Cannibal Holocaust's way? Well, maybe, but this is one of the only movies on the whole list whose function as part of a canon makes sense to me. It's one of the earliest examples of a medium being established capable of cataloging mankind's abject and carnivalesque sense of cruelty.

Electrocuting an Elephant (Thomas Edison, 1903). Already it feels as though I'm headed down the wrong way of a one-way street. Ten slots and I give one to this minute-minus animal snuff film? Am I just trying to sidestep my misguided temptation to throw a vote Cannibal Holocaust's way? Well, maybe, but this is one of the only movies on the whole list whose function as part of a canon makes sense to me. It's one of the earliest examples of a medium being established capable of cataloging mankind's abject and carnivalesque sense of cruelty.