The Internet Movie Database includes a phrase containing the word, "Political," as one of the keywords describing the films below.
| Rank | Title | Year | Director(s) | Overall Rank |
| 1 | Citizen Kane | 1941 | Orson Welles | 1 |
| 2 | Casablanca | 1942 | Michael Curtiz | 2 |
| 3 | Lawrence of Arabia | 1962 | David Lean | 8 |
| 4 | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | 1964 | Stanley Kubrick | 14 |
| 5 | Taxi Driver | 1976 | Martin Scorsese | 16 |
| 6 | Chinatown | 1974 | Roman Polanski | 19 |
| 7 | A Clockwork Orange | 1971 | Stanley Kubrick | 43 |
| 8 | Duck Soup | 1933 | Leo McCarey | 56 |
| 9 | The Battleship Potemkin | 1925 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 65 |
| 10 | Nashville | 1975 | Robert Altman | 70 |
| 11 | His Girl Friday | 1940 | Howard Hawks | 86 |
| 12 | The Manchurian Candidate | 1962 | John Frankenheimer | 93 |
| 13 | Braveheart | 1995 | Mel Gibson | 94 |
| 14 | Ben-Hur | 1959 | William Wyler | 101 |
| 15 | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | 1939 | Frank Capra | 109 |
| 16 | The Birth of a Nation | 1915 | D.W. Griffith | 112 |
| 17 | Intolerance | 1916 | D.W. Griffith | 133 |
| 18 | Back to the Future | 1985 | Robert Zemeckis | 137 |
| 19 | Gladiator | 2000 | Ridley Scott | 138 |
| 20 | Cabaret | 1972 | Bob Fosse | 148 |
| 21 | Monty Python and the Holy Grail | 1975 | Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones | 149 |
| 22 | The Conformist | 1970 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 184 |
| 23 | Napoléon | 1927 | Abel Gance | 194 |
| 24 | Andrei Rublev | 1969 | Andrei Tarkovsky | 200 |
| 25 | Gandhi | 1982 | Richard Attenborough | 221 |
| 26 | Once Upon a Time in America | 1984 | Sergio Leone | 233 |
| 27 | The Day the Earth Stood Still | 1951 | Robert Wise | 240 |
| 28 | Scarface | 1983 | Brian De Palma | 260 |
| 29 | The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie | 1972 | Luis Buñuel | 266 |
| 30 | The Battle of Algiers | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo | 292 |
| 31 | All the President's Men | 1976 | Alan J. Pakula | 309 |
| 32 | Ivan the Terrible | 1944 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 363 |
| 33 | Akira | 1988 | Katsuhiro Ôtomo | 386 |
| 34 | The Great Dictator | 1940 | Charles Chaplin | 392 |
| 35 | There's Something about Mary | 1998 | Bobby and Peter Farrelly | 411 |
| 36 | The Leopard | 1963 | Luchino Visconti | 420 |
| 37 | JFK | 1991 | Oliver Stone | 424 |
| 38 | A Man for All Seasons | 1966 | Fred Zinnemann | 428 |
| 39 | Triumph of the Will | 1935 | Leni Riefenstahl | 432 |
| 40 | Reds | 1981 | Warren Beatty | 452 |
| 41 | Being There | 1979 | Hal Ashby | 454 |
| 42 | Miller's Crossing | 1990 | Joel Coen | 478 |
| 43 | Z | 1969 | Costa-Gavras | 483 |
| 44 | Batman | 1989 | Tim Burton | 493 |
| 45 | The Sorrow and the Pity | 1969 | Marcel Ophüls | 502 |
| 46 | The Last Emperor | 1987 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 504 |
| 47 | Y tu mamá también | 2001 | Alfonso Cuarón | 523 |
| 48 | Born Yesterday | 1950 | George Cukor | 541 |
| 49 | The Killing Fields | 1984 | Roland Joffé | 544 |
| 50 | Farewell My Concubine | 1993 | Kaige Chen | 548 |
| 51 | Malcolm X | 1992 | Spike Lee | 551 |
| 52 | The Big Heat | 1953 | Fritz Lang | 558 |
| 53 | Casino | 1995 | Martin Scorsese | 560 |
| 54 | The Remains of the Day | 1993 | James Ivory | 591 |
| 55 | Traffic | 2000 | Steven Soderbergh | 599 |
| 56 | À Nous la Liberté | 1931 | René Clair | 634 |
| 57 | Sleeper | 1973 | Woody Allen | 641 |
| 58 | The Way We Were | 1973 | Sydney Pollack | 647 |
| 59 | Naked | 1993 | Mike Leigh | 658 |
| 60 | Born on the Fourth of July | 1989 | Oliver Stone | 678 |
| 61 | The Lion in Winter | 1968 | Anthony Harvey | 720 |
| 62 | All the King's Men | 1949 | Robert Rossen | 721 |
| 63 | Three Kings | 1999 | David O. Russell | 722 |
| 64 | October | 1928 | Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein | 766 |
| 65 | The Travelling Players | 1975 | Theodoros Angelopoulos | 768 |
| 66 | Philadelphia | 1993 | Jonathan Demme | 777 |
| 67 | Fiddler on the Roof | 1971 | Norman Jewison | 783 |
| 68 | 1900 | 1976 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 814 |
| 69 | A Face in the Crowd | 1957 | Elia Kazan | 843 |
| 70 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | 1988 | Philip Kaufman | 845 |
| 71 | Seven Beauties | 1975 | Lina Wertmüller | 887 |
| 72 | El Topo | 1970 | Alejandro Jodorowsky | 889 |
| 73 | Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones | 2002 | George Lucas | 907 |
| 74 | Judgment at Nuremberg | 1961 | Stanley Kramer | 920 |
| 75 | Roger & Me | 1989 | Michael Moore | 926 |
| 76 | Bowling for Columbine | 2002 | Michael Moore | 933 |
| 77 | Hail the Conquering Hero | 1944 | Preston Sturges | 938 |
| 78 | Underground | 1995 | Emir Kusturica | 950 |
| 79 | Quiz Show | 1994 | Robert Redford | 961 |
| 80 | The Official Story | 1985 | Luis Puenzo | 974 |
| 81 | Around the World in Eighty Days | 1956 | Michael Anderson | 985 |
| 82 | The China Syndrome | 1979 | James Bridges | 1000 |
| 83 | Batman Begins | 2005 | Christopher Nolan | 1005 |
| 84 | Medium Cool | 1969 | Haskell Wexler | 1012 |
| 85 | A Brighter Summer Day | 1991 | Edward Yang | 1015 |
| 86 | Elizabeth | 1998 | Shekhar Kapur | 1039 |
| 87 | The Barbarian Invasions | 2003 | Denys Arcand | 1045 |
| 88 | Woodstock | 1970 | Michael Wadleigh | 1049 |
| 89 | Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler | 1922 | Fritz Lang | 1113 |
| 90 | Cleopatra | 1963 | Joseph L. Mankiewicz | 1169 |
| 91 | Shame | 1968 | Ingmar Bergman | 1194 |
| 92 | Gangs of New York | 2002 | Martin Scorsese | 1209 |
| 93 | Blow Out | 1981 | Brian De Palma | 1210 |
| 94 | Wag the Dog | 1997 | Barry Levinson | 1217 |
| 95 | The American President | 1995 | Rob Reiner | 1218 |
| 96 | Ray | 2004 | Taylor Hackford | 1230 |
| 97 | Kolya | 1996 | Jan Sverák | 1263 |
| 98 | The Lives of Others | 2006 | Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck | 1273 |
| 99 | Silkwood | 1983 | Mike Nichols | 1274 |
| 100 | In the Line of Fire | 1993 | Wolfgang Petersen | 1283 |