Greatest films of all time come to Philadelphia. All 100 of them.

Ever since the 2022 Sight and Sound survey of the 100 greatest films of all time was announced on Dec. 1, cineastes the world over have been arguing about it.

Amid the arguing, Trey Shields began plotting how he could bring the list’s films to Philadelphia. All 100 of them.

Shields is the programming manager and senior festival programmer for the Philadelphia Film Society. In addition to the Philadelphia Film Festival and other festivals organized by PFS, he supervises the organization’s screenings of older films.

Not long after the survey’s release, Shields had lined up a screening series of the entire list, to run in mostly descending order over the course of 2023. While most films will screen at the Philadelphia Film Center, some will show at the PFS Bourse.

When lists of the greatest films ever made are released, the same ones tend to land at the top every time; usually some combination of Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather, Gone With the Wind, and Vertigo. The British film magazine only releases its critics survey once every 10 years, and when the latest version arrived, it was a bit different from usual. Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), took the top spot, beating out previous winners Vertigo (#2 this year) and Citizen Kane (#3). This is the first time a female filmmaker has topped the list.

“I was aware that the list was going to drop,” Shields said. “In the back of my head, [I thought] it would be really cool if we could do it.” But after Michael Lerman, the Film Society’s artistic director and the senior director of programming, asked if he wanted to put the program together, Shields got started setting it up.

“I spent like 48 hours trying to figure out the schedule so that it made sense, and we could keep it in countdown order as much as possible,” he added. He spent that time “looking at all the different licensing and looking for sourcing of prints and films. Some of this stuff is fairly old and some more obscure than others.”

Shields said he believes that PFS is the only theater or film society in the country that has announced plans to show all 100 films, although some others are showing selections from the list. The BFI Southbank theater in London, which is affiliated with Sight and Sound, is showing all 100 between January and March.

The distributor Janus Films, Shields said, is providing nearly half of the list, although some films were brought in through individual deals. The series will bring films to town that haven’t played locally in years, if at all, including some Shields hasn’t seen either.

The schedule has been announced through the end of March. The series got underway Jan. 4 with Jordan Peele’s 2017 Get Out, which was #100. Other upcoming films include Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (on Jan. 11), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady on Jan. 14, and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (in a black and white print) on Feb. 1.

The countdown will likely be incorporated into the Philadelphia Film Festival in October, and Shields expects the top films on the list — Jeanne Dielman, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, and In the Mood for Love — to show at the end of December.

“It’s the chance to see a lot of good stuff, whether you’ve seen it before or for the first time,” Shields said.

While officially a “critics survey,” the Sight and Sound poll consists of “critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics,” as noted by the publication. This year’s electorate was the largest ever, with 1,639 participants, and they were much more diverse than in the past — from race to gender, to profession to age, to geography.

Vertigo’s win in 2012 marked the first time since 1962 that a film other than Citizen Kane had topped the survey. In 2022, the poll revealed considerably more films by women, from different countries, and of more recent vintage.

One thing that’s missing from the list? Any films with direct ties to Philadelphia. Rocky is not on the list, nor are The Philadelphia Story or Philadelphia. The closest thing is director David Lynch, who lived in Philadelphia for a time as a young man. Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive both made the 100, although his Philadelphia-inspired Eraserhead did not.

Tickets are available for individual films through the end of March, as well as bundles of six.