AFI Best Film, TV Shows of 2022 Include ‘Avatar’ Sequel, ‘Women Talking,’ ‘The Bear’ and ‘Mo’

The American Film Institute has revealed its picks for the best movies and TV shows of 2022.

The group’s picks for the 10 best films are, in alphabetical order: Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Nope, She Said, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, The Woman King and Women Talking.

On the TV side, AFI’s picks for the 10 best TV shows of the year are, again alphabetically, Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Better Call Saul, Hacks, Mo, Pachinko, Reservation Dogs, Severance, Somebody Somewhere and The White Lotus.

AFI also awarded a special award to The Banshees of Inisherin, with AFI saying the special honor is given to “works of excellence that fall outside of AFI Awards’ eligibility criteria.”

AFI’s honorees will be recognized in an awards ceremony luncheon on Jan. 13, 2023 at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills.

“AFI Awards shines a light upon excellence in storytelling and the collaborators who bring these stories to the screen,” AFI president and CEO Bob Gazzale said in a statement. “This year, more than ever, celebrating the community of artists that realize these dreams is particularly meaningful — as they have lifted our spirits through the most challenging of times and proven the power of this great art form.”

The AFI winners were selected through a jury process involving AFI trustees, artists, criics and scholars. This year’s juries included W. Kamau Bell, Colman Domingo, Siân Heder, Brad Ingelsby, Marti Noxon and Mario Van Peebles; renowned film historians L.S. Kim, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Leonard Maltin and Robert Thompson; members of the AFI Board of Trustees; film critics Janet Maslin, Shawn Edwards from the African American Film Critics Association, and film and television critics from outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Salon, TV Guide and The Washington Post.

The juries were chaired by AFI Board of Trustees member Jeanine Basinger (chair emerita and founder of the Film Studies Department, Wesleyan University) and AFI Board of Trustees vice chair Richard Frank (former chairman of Walt Disney Television, president of Walt Disney Studios, president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences).