Scott Tobias: Top 30 films of 2015. The top ten were submitted to the Village Voice poll and the Variety survey, and he updated and expanded the list on Letterboxd.
[see also 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2011]
- The Look of Silence — Joshua Oppenheimer
- Phoenix — Christian Petzold
- Carol — Todd Haynes
- Brooklyn — John Crowley
- The Assassin — Hou Hsiao-Hsien
- Inside Out — Pete Docter
- Heaven Knows What — Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie
- It Follows — David Robert Mitchell
- Mad Max: Fury Road — George Miller
- The Hateful Eight — Quentin Tarantino
- Western — Bill Ross
- 45 Years — Andrew Haigh
- Anomalisa — Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson
- The Duke of Burgundy — Peter Strickland
- Buzzard — Joel Potrykus
- Tangerine — Sean Baker
- Clouds of Sils Maria — Olivier Assayas
- Sicario — Denis Villeneuve
- Bridge of Spies — Steven Spielberg
- Approaching the Elephant — Amanda Wilder
- Timbuktu — Abderrahmane Sissako
- James White — Josh Mond
- (T)ERROR — Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe
- Crimson Peak — Guillermo del Toro
- Cartel Land — Matthew Heineman
- Democrats — Camilla Nielsson
- The Big Short — Adam McKay
- Magic Mike XXL — Gregory Jacobs
- The Tribe — Miroslav Slaboshpitsky
- Spotlight — Tom McCarthy