The Internet Movie Database has either "Political" or "Politics" as one of the keywords describing the films below.
| Rank | Title | Year | Director(s) | Overall Rank |
| 1 | Citizen Kane | 1941 | Orson Welles | 2 |
| 2 | Casablanca | 1942 | Michael Curtiz | 3 |
| 3 | Lawrence of Arabia | 1962 | David Lean | 9 |
| 4 | Gone with the Wind | 1939 | Victor Fleming | 17 |
| 5 | Taxi Driver | 1976 | Martin Scorsese | 19 |
| 6 | Chinatown | 1974 | Roman Polanski | 20 |
| 7 | A Clockwork Orange | 1971 | Stanley Kubrick | 36 |
| 8 | Duck Soup | 1933 | Leo McCarey | 56 |
| 9 | The Battleship Potemkin | 1925 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 74 |
| 10 | Nashville | 1975 | Robert Altman | 86 |
| 11 | Gladiator | 2000 | Ridley Scott | 113 |
| 12 | Braveheart | 1995 | Mel Gibson | 116 |
| 13 | The Manchurian Candidate | 1962 | John Frankenheimer | 124 |
| 14 | The Best Years of Our Lives | 1946 | William Wyler | 126 |
| 15 | Ben-Hur | 1959 | William Wyler | 140 |
| 16 | Amadeus | 1984 | Milos Forman | 141 |
| 17 | Cabaret | 1972 | Bob Fosse | 144 |
| 18 | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington | 1939 | Frank Capra | 156 |
| 19 | The Conformist | 1970 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 169 |
| 20 | Withnail & I | 1987 | Bruce Robinson | 183 |
| 21 | Donnie Darko | 2001 | Richard Kelly | 212 |
| 22 | The Battle of Algiers | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo | 215 |
| 23 | Andrei Rublev | 1966 | Andrei Tarkovsky | 236 |
| 24 | Scarface | 1983 | Brian De Palma | 239 |
| 25 | Gandhi | 1982 | Richard Attenborough | 251 |
| 26 | Napoléon | 1927 | Abel Gance | 264 |
| 27 | All the President's Men | 1976 | Alan J. Pakula | 277 |
| 28 | The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance | 1962 | John Ford | 288 |
| 29 | The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie | 1972 | Luis Buñuel | 312 |
| 30 | Ikiru | 1952 | Akira Kurosawa | 331 |
| 31 | The Leopard | 1963 | Luchino Visconti | 332 |
| 32 | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | 1943 | Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger | 390 |
| 33 | Umberto D. | 1952 | Vittorio De Sica | 391 |
| 34 | JFK | 1991 | Oliver Stone | 423 |
| 35 | Ashes and Diamonds | 1958 | Andrzej Wajda | 444 |
| 36 | Ivan the Terrible | 1944 | Sergei M. Eisenstein | 453 |
| 37 | Y tu mamá también | 2001 | Alfonso Cuarón | 457 |
| 38 | Being There | 1979 | Hal Ashby | 459 |
| 39 | Triumph of the Will | 1935 | Leni Riefenstahl | 465 |
| 40 | A Man for All Seasons | 1966 | Fred Zinnemann | 482 |
| 41 | Z | 1969 | Costa-Gavras | 489 |
| 42 | The Lives of Others | 2006 | Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck | 505 |
| 43 | Before Sunset | 2004 | Richard Linklater | 508 |
| 44 | Election | 1999 | Alexander Payne | 545 |
| 45 | Malcolm X | 1992 | Spike Lee | 582 |
| 46 | Reds | 1981 | Warren Beatty | 588 |
| 47 | The Remains of the Day | 1993 | James Ivory | 594 |
| 48 | Downfall | 2004 | Oliver Hirschbiegel | 600 |
| 49 | Farewell My Concubine | 1993 | Kaige Chen | 601 |
| 50 | Giant | 1956 | George Stevens | 605 |
| 51 | My Beautiful Laundrette | 1985 | Stephen Frears | 610 |
| 52 | The Scarlet Empress | 1934 | Josef von Sternberg | 631 |
| 53 | Naked | 1993 | Mike Leigh | 632 |
| 54 | The Tin Drum | 1979 | Volker Schlöndorff | 644 |
| 55 | The Insider | 1999 | Michael Mann | 647 |
| 56 | Three Kings | 1999 | David O. Russell | 663 |
| 57 | Closely Watched Trains | 1966 | Jirí Menzel | 664 |
| 58 | Born Yesterday | 1950 | George Cukor | 690 |
| 59 | Traffic | 2000 | Steven Soderbergh | 713 |
| 60 | The Big Carnival | 1951 | Billy Wilder | 728 |
| 61 | Born on the Fourth of July | 1989 | Oliver Stone | 781 |
| 62 | Elizabeth | 1998 | Shekhar Kapur | 798 |
| 63 | Hidden | 2005 | Michael Haneke | 836 |
| 64 | Bowling for Columbine | 2002 | Michael Moore | 840 |
| 65 | The Dead | 1987 | John Huston | 841 |
| 66 | Black Hawk Down | 2001 | Ridley Scott | 866 |
| 67 | All the King's Men | 1949 | Robert Rossen | 873 |
| 68 | Beau travail | 1999 | Claire Denis | 896 |
| 69 | Philadelphia | 1993 | Jonathan Demme | 898 |
| 70 | À Nous la Liberté | 1931 | René Clair | 937 |
| 71 | The Parallax View | 1974 | Alan J. Pakula | 953 |
| 72 | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | 1988 | Philip Kaufman | 958 |
| 73 | Muriel's Wedding | 1994 | P.J. Hogan | 960 |
| 74 | The Eclipse | 1962 | Michelangelo Antonioni | 967 |
| 75 | 1900 | 1976 | Bernardo Bertolucci | 970 |
| 76 | A Face in the Crowd | 1957 | Elia Kazan | 972 |
| 77 | My Own Private Idaho | 1991 | Gus Van Sant | 991 |
| 78 | Underground | 1995 | Emir Kusturica | 996 |
| 79 | Quiz Show | 1994 | Robert Redford | 1012 |
| 80 | Love Actually | 2003 | Richard Curtis | 1024 |
| 81 | Silkwood | 1983 | Mike Nichols | 1051 |
| 82 | The Passenger | 1975 | Michelangelo Antonioni | 1063 |
| 83 | The Man in the White Suit | 1951 | Alexander Mackendrick | 1071 |
| 84 | The Ice Storm | 1997 | Ang Lee | 1072 |
| 85 | The Garden of the Finzi-Continis | 1970 | Vittorio De Sica | 1082 |
| 86 | A Brighter Summer Day | 1991 | Edward Yang | 1108 |
| 87 | Chocolat | 2000 | Lasse Hallström | 1114 |
| 88 | Fury | 1936 | Fritz Lang | 1115 |
| 89 | Slacker | 1991 | Richard Linklater | 1142 |
| 90 | I Am Cuba | 1968 | Mikheil Kalatozishvili | 1159 |
| 91 | The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover | 1989 | Peter Greenaway | 1171 |
| 92 | The Year of Living Dangerously | 1982 | Peter Weir | 1189 |
| 93 | To Live | 1994 | Yimou Zhang | 1221 |
| 94 | Meet John Doe | 1941 | Frank Capra | 1231 |
| 95 | Team America: World Police | 2004 | Trey Parker | 1236 |
| 96 | Burnt by the Sun | 1994 | Nikita Mikhalkov | 1244 |
| 97 | Wag the Dog | 1997 | Barry Levinson | 1261 |
| 98 | The Barbarian Invasions | 2003 | Denys Arcand | 1274 |
| 99 | Kolya | 1996 | Jan Sverák | 1302 |
| 100 | Three Days of the Condor | 1975 | Sydney Pollack | 1308 |