This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2006 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.
- INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch)
- Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
- Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)
- Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
- The Prestige (Christopher Nolan)
- Southland Tales (Richard Kelly)
- 12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu)
- Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo)
- Time (Kim Ki-duk)
- Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke)
Other 2006 films I’ve seen
- Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
- Babel (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
- Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
- Bled Number One (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)
- Blockade (Sergei Loznitsa)
- Borat (Larry Charles)
- Broken Sky (Julián Hernández)
- Bug (William Friedkin)
- Cages (Olivier Masset-Depasse)
- Cars (John Lasseter)
- Casino Royale (Martin Campbell)
- Charlie Says (Nicole Garcia)
- Charlotte’s Web (Gary Winick)
- Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón)
- Clerks II (Kevin Smith)
- Click (Frank Coraci)
- Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa)
- The Da Vinci Code (Ron Howard)
- The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
- Destricted (Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Cecily Brown, Larry Clark, Sante D’Orazio, Marilyn Minter, Gaspar Noé, Richard Prince, Sam Taylor-Johnson, & Tunga)
- The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel)
- Dong (Jia Zhang Ke)
- drama/mex (Gerardo Naranjo)
- Dreamgirls (Bill Condon)
- Election 2 (Johnnie To)
- Failure to Launch (Tom Dey)
- Fantasma (Lisandro Alonso)
- Fireworks Wednesday (Asghar Farhadi)
- Flandres (Bruno Dumont)
- For Your Consideration (Christopher Guest)
- The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky)
- Glory Road (James Gartner)
- Glue (Alexis Dos Santos)
- Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck)
- The Hawk Is Dying (Julian Goldberger)
- Honour of the Knights (Quixotic) (Albert Serra)
- The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
- I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang)
- Idiocracy (Mike Judge)
- Inside Man (Spike Lee)
- Jupiter’s Dance (Renaud Barret & Florent de la Tullaye)
- Kodachrome Dailies from the Time of Song and Solitude (Reel 1) (Nathaniel Dorsky)
- Kodak (Tacita Dean)
- Lady in the Water (M. Night Shyamalan)
- Little Children (Todd Field)
- Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton)
- Longing (Valeska Grisebach)
- Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola)
- Miami Vice (Michael Mann)
- Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams)
- Offside (Jafar Panahi)
- Once (John Carney)
- Over There (Chantal Akerman)
- Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo Del Toro)
- Paris, je t’aime (Olivier Assayas, Frédéric Auburtin, Emmanuel Benbihy, Gurinder Chadha, Sylvain Chomet, Ethan & Joel Coen, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Gérard Depardieu, Christopher Doyle, Richard LaGravenese, Vincenzo Natali, Alexander Payne, Bruno Podalydès, Walter Salles, Oliver Schmitz, Nobuhiro Suwa, Daniela Thomas, Tom Tykwer, & Gus Van Sant)
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tom Tykwer)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski)
- A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
- Private Fears in Public Places (Alain Resnais)
- Reprise (Joachim Trier)
- Reverberlin (Michael Snow)
- The Right of the Weakest (Lucas Belvaux)
- A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater)
- The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)
- She’s the Man (Andy Fickman)
- Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell)
- Slither (James Gunn)
- Snakes on a Plane (David R. Ellis)
- Suely in the Sky (Karim Aïnouz)
- Superman Returns (Bryan Singer)
- Taxidermia (György Pálfi)
- This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Kirby Dick)
- 300 (Zack Snyder)
- United 93 (Paul Greengrass)
- Volver (Pedro Almodóvar)
- Wild Tigers I Have Known (Cam Archer)
- The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach)
- Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (Douglas Gordon & Philippe Parreno)