Top Films of 2022

Top Films of 2022

Happy New Year from OVID! Here's a roundup of our top fifty most-watched films and programs in 2022. The list is based upon the total number of minutes watched for each film, and it is ranked from # 1 to # 50. Look out for surprises, and some great films you may have missed!

Go here for the top films of 2023.

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Top Films of 2022
  • Putin's Witnesses

    Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2018 • 102 minutes

    On December 31, 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin went on live television just before midnight. He announced he was stepping down, and his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin, would take over as acting president. Putin promised a pres...

  • No Gods, No Masters - Pt. I

    Directed by Tancrède Ramonet • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

    This episode of NO GODS NO MASTERS shows how anarchism emerged from the horrendous social conditions facing workers at a time when industrialization was, paradoxically, providing better hygiene and social standards – for some. In an ...

  • Wild

    Directed by Nicolette Krebitz • Drama • With Lilith Stangenberg • 2016 • 97 minutes

    Nicolette Krebitz’s long awaited third feature WILD, shocked and awed audiences at the 2016 Sundance festival. A seductive, dark trip into the soul of civilized humanity, WILD is a strange, dream-like journey of ...

  • Antisemitism

    Directed by Ilan Ziv • Documentary • 2022 • 120 minutes

    This documentary masterfully traces the history of anti-Semitism and its effects, from cartoon-like medieval church iconography showing Jews with funnels on their heads, to WWII propaganda comparing Jews to rats and neo-Nazis marching in th...

  • Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States

    Directed by Olivier Azam, Daniel Mermet • Documentary • With Howard Zinn • 2016 • 100 minutes

    "As long as rabbits don't have historians, history will be written by the hunters."

    With the tremendous success of his book, A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn radically changed the w...

  • Maison Close - Episode 1

    Directed by Mabrouk El Mechri • Drama • With Jemima West, Anne Charrier, Valérie Karsenti • 2010 • 56 minutes

    Paris, 1871. Vera, the star attraction of the The Paradise luxury brothel, is about to finally leave the institution to become the live-in mistress of the Baron Du Plessis. However, The ...

  • Adam Smith, The Birth of the Free Market

    Directed by Ilan Ziv • Documentary • 2014 • 53 minutes

    'The magical circle of investment and conquest... begins with the discovery of the Americas. This is the engine of two wheels: the wheel of scientific discoveries and the wheel of capitalist economy. Credit, investment, profits. More credit,...

  • Sex & Lucía

    Directed by Julio Medem • Drama • With Paz Vega, Tristán Ulloa, Javier Cámara • 2004 • 122 minutes

    Lucía is a young waitress in Madrid, who seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island after the loss of her longtime boyfriend. Amidst the fresh air, dazzling sun, and glistening deep blu...

  • Beanpole

    Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Drama • With Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov • 2019 • 137 minutes

    In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as an...

  • Gorbachev. Heaven

    Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2021 • 100 minutes

    GORBACHEV. HEAVEN finds acclaimed director Vitaly Mansky (UNDER THE SUN) at home with a man who helped to shape the 20th-century: Mikhail Gorbachev. 

    The Soviet leader was acclaimed as the architect of Glasnost and Perestroika, polici...

  • Secret Museums

    Directed by Peter Woditsch • Documentary • 2008 • 77 minutes

    Throughout the ages, erotic art has been created by some of the world's best-known artists, but it is rarely on public display. Whether it is held in private collections, or kept under lock and key in museums and libraries worldwide, e...

  • Algren

    Directed by Michael Caplan • Documentary • 2021 • 85 minutes

    The new feature documentary ALGREN is a journey through the gritty world, brilliant mind, and noble heart of Nelson Algren. Exploding onto the national scene in 1950 after winning the first-ever National Book Award for The Man with the...

  • Elles

    Directed by Małgorzata Szumowska • Drama • With Juliette Binoche, Anaïs Demoustier, Joanna Kulig • 2011 • 99 minutes

    A provocative and raw exploration of female sexuality, director Malgoska Szumowska's ELLES paints an unromantic picture of upper-crust domesticity refracted through the vibrant e...

  • The Red Soul

    Directed by Jessica Gorter • Documentary • 2017 • 90 minutes

    The Red Soul lays bare the Russian psyche of today and shows a world full of contradictions. In a country where hardly any family escaped the hunger, fear and violence resulting from Stalin’s reign of terror, no one has ever been convi...

  • Maborosi

    Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda • Drama • With Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano • 1995 • 110 minutes

    One of the finest films of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film Maborosi is a story of love, loss, and ultimately, regeneration.

    Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother ma...

  • The Decline of the American Empire

    Directed by Denys Arcand • Drama • With Dominique Michel, Dorothée Berryman, Louise Portal • 1986 • 101 minutes

    When a Montreal professor (Rémy Girard) and his wife (Dorothée Berryman) gather six of their erudite friends for a holiday in the country, the conversation naturally turns to sex. The ...

  • A History of the European Working Class - Episode 1

    Directed by Stan Neumann • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes

    Starting in the 18th century, transformations in commerce led to the emergence of the early factory system and the birth of the British working class. Displaced from the countryside, these new workers flooded into textile mills that woul...

  • Red Hollywood

    Directed by Thom Andersen & Noel Burch • Documentary • With Billy Woodberry, Paul Jarrico, Alfred Lewis Levitt, Abraham Polonsky, Ayn Rand • 2014 • 118 minutes

    A fascinating documentary by Thom Andersen (director of Los Angeles Plays Itself) and Noel Burch (author of To The Distant Observer), Re...

  • Close Relations (Rodnye)

    Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2016 • 114 minutes

    Following Ukraine’s revolution in 2013, filmmaker Vitaly Mansky decides to travel throughout the region and visit his family. He talks on camera with family members in Ukraine, Crimea and Donetsk, hoping to gain a better understanding ...

  • Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune

    Directed by Kenneth Bowser • Documentary • With Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Tom Hayden, Christopher Hitchens, Sean Penn, Pete Seeger, Peter Yarrow • 2010 • 97 minutes

    As our country continues to embroil itself in foreign wars, PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE is a timely and relevant tribute to an u...

  • The Seduction of Mimi

    Directed by Lina Wertmüller • Drama • With Mariangela Melato, Agostina Belli, Giancarlo Giannini • 1972 • 112 minutes

    THE SEDUCTION OF MIMI is a raucous sex comedy that brought international fame to director Lina Wertmuller (Swept Away).

    Giancarlo Giannini (Love and Anarchy) gives a wonderfull...

  • Starlet

    Directed by Sean Baker • Drama • With Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson • 2012 • 103 minutes

    Starlet explores the unlikely friendship between 21 year-old aspiring actress Jane (Dree Hemingway) and elderly widow Sadie (Besedka Johnson) after their worlds collide in California’s San Fernando Valley....

  • A Game for Six Lovers (L’eau à la bouche)

    Directed by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • Drama • With Bernadette Lafont, Françoise Brion • 1960 • 84 minutes

    One of the founders of the epochal film magazine Cahiers du cinema, and therefore a prime mover of the French New Wave, Doniol-Valcroze joined all the upstart critics making films in the lat...

  • Lolita (Adrian Lyne)

    Directed by Adrian Lyne • Drama • With Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella • 1997 • 137 minutes

    Humbert, a brilliant professor of French literature in New England, rents a room from a lonely widow, Charlotte, who falls in love with him. She is a giddy and talkative la...