Bizarre long con … Armando Espitia as Arturo and Ana Celeste Montalvo as Ale in A Child of My Own.Photograph: Netflix

20. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (1896)

A 50-second dispatch from daily life blew the whistle on the approaching juggernaut of cinema and its unbeatable horsepower of verisimilitude. But if we must be strictly factual about the iconic Lumière brothers' short, the anecdote about audience members fleeing their seats in fear of being crushed by the oncoming locomotive probably never happened.