The world of Indian cinema is so ginormous and, quite frankly, overwhelming, that choosing the best Bollywood films feels an impossible task. To celebrate and appreciate mainstream Indian movies – the biggest and most significant films that have shaped Bollywood, Kollywood and beyond for decades – we needed a helping hand.

It's why, to help us find our top 100 films, we asked a bunch of Bollywood experts and Time Out writers to whittle them down. The results aren't all strictly Bollywood films, but they are all incredible, spanning classics like 1957's ‘Mother India’, the first Hindi film to be nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film at the Oscars, to blockbusters like the ‘Bahubali’ saga, two films that sized up Hollywood and said, ‘We can do that too!’. So go forth and discover these 100 great Indian movies – superb films that feature the best Bollywood songs and dances.

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