Your Top 10 debut features

Did this elsewhere - and thought it would be fun here.

List your top 10 debut feature films.

No documentaries.
No 'made for TV' films

Not your favourite first films from your favourite Directors, but the top 10 greatest ever debuts.

List 10 from first to last. 1 Honoruable mention is allowed


1. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
2. Primer (Shane Carruth)
3. Angst (Gerald Kargl)
4. Moon (Duncan Jones)
5. Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay)
6. Amores Perros (Alejandro G. Iñárritu)
7. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
8. Pi (Darren Aronofsky)
9. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet)
10. Badlands (Terence Malick)

Honourable Mention: 'This is Spinal Tap' (Rob Reiner)

1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
2. The Maltese Falcon (John Huston)
3. Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam)
4. My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin)
5. Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle)
6. Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
7. Badlands (Terrence Mallick)
8. Ex Machina (Alex Garland)
9. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lument)
10. Shadows (John Cassavettes)

From the top of my head so most likely missing something important.

1. The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley)

2. John Wick (Chad Stahelski)
3. Dark Waters (Mariano Baino)
4. Elina: As If I Wasn't There (Klaus Härö)

5-10. Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Richard Blackburn)
5-10. Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam)
5-10. The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (Robert Eggers)
5-10. The Addams Family (Barry Sonnenfield)
5-10. Macabre (Lamberto Bava)
5-10. The Eyes of My Mother (Nicolas Pesce)

Honorable mention:
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Guy Ritchie)

Not sure about a TOP 10 but:

That Day, on the Beach (1983) by Edward Yang is the best debut ever imo.

Too lazy to order them but off the top of my head...

Ivan's Childhood
Breathless
Akira
Withnail and I
Badlands
The Duelists
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Guard
Boy Meets Girl
A Knife In The Water

1. 12 Angry Men
2. Little Miss Sunshine
3. The Blair Witch Project
4. Nightcrawler
5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
6. Eraser-head
7. The Wicker Man
8. Hunger
9. The Producers
10. Brigsby Bear

Hard to decide for the last 2.

1. Akira
2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
3. Repo Man
4. Withnail & I
5. Heathers
6. Eraserhead
7. This Is Spinal Tap
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Clerks
10. The Room

__________________
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

01. Eraserhead
02. Ratcatcher
03. The 400 Blows
04. Hiroshima Mon Amour
05. A New Leaf
06. The Ascent
07. The Maltese Falcon
08. Citizen Kane
09. This Is Spinal Tap
10. Reservoir Dogs

I'm sure i'm forgetting some.

I look at your list and realise I've forgotten some.

For some reason I didn't think of this as his debut even though it is, I spose because he was always so full of talk of the 60's and 70's film scenes from his acting days.

1 - In Bruges by Martin McDonagh
2 - The Return by Andrey Zvyagintev
3 - Amores Perros by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
4 - sex, lies, and videotape by Steven Soderbergh
5 - Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly
6 - Perfect Blue by Satoshi Kon
7 - Ordinary People by Robert Redford
8 - Blood Simple by The Coen Brothers
9 - Angst by Gerald Kargl
10 - The Seventh Continent by Michael Haneke

As for début features that I'm the most interested in eventually seeing...
1 - Thief by Michael Mann
2 - The Virgin Suicides by Sofia Coppola
3 - Knife in the Water by Roman Polanski
4 - Buffalo ’66 by Vincent Gallo
5 - Repo Man by Alex Cox
6 - Sexy Beast by Jonathan Glazer
7 - Rebels of the Neon God by Tsai Ming-liang
8 - Maborosi by Hirokazu Koreeda
9 - Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer by John McNaughton
10 - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Mike Nichols

__________________
"A film has to be a dialogue, not a monologue — a dialogue to provoke in the viewer his own thoughts, his own feelings. And if a film is a dialogue, then it’s a good film; if it’s not a dialogue, it’s a bad film."

- Michael "Gloomy Old Fart" Haneke

Haven't ordered them by rank, these were the main ones that came to mind

1. American Beauty
2. Ex Machina
3. As Tears Go By
4. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
5. It Follows
6. The Maltese Falcon
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. The Wicker Man
9. Akira
10. Dances with Wolves

Citizen Kane and 12 Angry Men are the two gold standards of film debuts.

Would say in terms of influence, La Pointe Courte, 400 Blows and Breathless rival Citizen Kane and are more important than 12 Angry Men, as they were big parts of spawning the French New Wave which influenced a lot of important later cinema including the Hollywood New Wave.

I also think i (and i imagine you too) would have to see a lot more cinema to declare something the "gold standard", it's certainly the AFI narrative but that doesn't make it fact.

Perfect Blue and Buffalo '66 are two i forgot.

I almost mentioned Spike Lee for Do The Right Thing, then I remembered it wasn't Spike's debut film.

Scorsese hasn't been mentioned yet for Mean Streets.

Not his debut. His third after Who's Knocking At My Door and Boxcar Bertha.

Hmmmm... actually never knew that. Learn somethin new everyday!

Alright, then I'll add Coen Bros for Blood Simple.

Everything I state is "IMO" even if it's not written as such.

I tend to have an exceptionally high opinion of 12 Angry Men, and PERSONALLY view it as the gold standard of directorial debuts.

Doesn't mean it's fact, and doesn't mean I'd go against another's opinion of what the best debut is.

I wasn't too big on Buffalo 66 for example, but I know many are... which is fine.

Fair enough, i've just seen you try to speak in objective terms about movies before so i wasn't sure if that was one of those times. I understand that no one needs to write IMO after every post but you have started threads and made posts before trying to objectively measure films. That's fine just thought i'd challenge it if that was the case there.

My idea of being objective is recognizing 2001 as a masterpiece, when I don't particularly care to watch it.

But no one can be 100% objective when it comes to movies. It's impossible.