An important part of every balanced cinematic diet is the political movie. Like any other art form, we need films that question authority, challenge our status quo and reexamine the structures any society has in place. From the satirical to the allegorical and everything in between, these are our picks for the 10 best political films of all time.

Political films don’t mean they’re strictly about the process of politics. Of course many of them are, from Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Charlie Wilson’s War to Jeff Bridges as President in The Contender. But the truly great political films can speak to the broader state of things, like Spike Lee and Do The Right Thing or Jeanne Dielman’s slice of life marathon masterpiece, or the obliquely allegorical, like John Carpenter’s Reagan era schlock perfection of They Live, the first appearance of Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in First Blood, or anti-war films like Christopher Nolan and Dunkirk or the harrowing Soviet film Come and See.

This movie list was written by Clint Gage and edited by Clint Gage and Justin Donaldson.

The Picks:

10 - Satire - Starship Troopers (1997) dir. Paul Verhoeven
9 - Based on True Events - The Battle of Algiers (1966) dir. Gill Pontecorvo
8 - Wheeling and Dealing - The Candidate (1972) dir. Michael Ritchie
7 - State of Society - Z (1969) dir. Costa-Gavras
6 - War Movie - Paths of Glory (1957) dir. Stanley Kubrick
5 - Propaganda Film - Battleship Potemkin (1925) dir. Sergei Eisenstein
4 - Conspiracy - The Manchurian Candidate (1962) dir. John Frankenheimer
3 - Cynicism - Medium Cool (1969) dir. Haskell Wexler
2 - Hope - Ikiru (1952) dir. Akira Kurosawa
1 - Allegorical - Night of the Living Dead (1968) dir. George A. Romero

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