1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die (2026)

The last edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die appeared in 2021. After a five-year hiatus, a new 2026 edition was published yesterday. The book, edited by Steven Jay Schneider and updated by Ian Haydn Smith, is now in its 20th edition, and every edition published in the last twenty years has been reviewed here: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

As usual, I have compared the latest edition page-by-page with the previous one. This time, there are twenty new entries, and therefore also twenty deletions.

These are the twenty entries added to the 2026 edition:

• Buffalo ’66
• Quo Vadis, Aida?
• Drive My Car
• Summer of Soul
• Dune I–II
• Aftersun
• RRR
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• The Zone of Interest
• Sing Sing
• The Brutalist
• Anora
• One Battle After Another
• Sorry, Baby
• It Was Just an Accident
• Sinners
• Weapons
• Sirāt

Technically there are twenty-one new films, although the two Dune films appear as a single combined entry. Buffalo ’66 was deleted when the 2019 edition was published, though it’s been reinstated for the 2026 edition.

These are the twenty films from the previous edition that have been deleted:

• The Thin Red Line
• The Cabin in the Woods
• Phantom Thread
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
• The Farewell
• Joker
• Little Women
• The Lighthouse
• The Vast of Night
• The Assistant
• Rocks
• Soul
• Never Rarely Sometimes Always
• Saint Maude
• Tenet
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
• BlacKkKlansman
• Booksmart
• Capernaum
• Roma

Aside from the updated film list, there are also two changes to the illustrations. The frontispiece on p. 2 is now a photograph from Taxi Driver, whereas it was a still from The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) in the previous edition. A photo from Salò on p. 597 has been replaced with a less revealing image from that film.