Andrew Haigh

Kim Gordon

Rachel Kushner

Pablo Larraín

Kitty Green

Ed Lachman

Ethan Hawke

Karyn Kusama

Duke Johnson

Lukas Dhont

Sophie de Rakoff

Sebastián Lelio

Ari Wegner

James Gray

Kimberly Peirce

Chai Vasarhelyi

Reinaldo Marcus Green

Taylor Russell

Mike Mills

Martha Coolidge’s VALLEY GIRL inspired Karyn to pursue her dream of directing. She also found a crush on a young Nicolas Cage.

Karyn Kusama on Valley Girl (1983)

Karyn’s fandom of Warren Beatty as an actor and filmmaker goes back to her childhood, and she shares how the weighty topics he tackles have stood the test of time: Communism as social justice in REDS, and the delusions of American democracy in THE PARALLAX VIEW.

Karyn Kusama on Parallax View (1974) & Reds (1981)

The indelible one-liners (which he committed to memory) of Alex Cox’s REPO MAN taught a young Ethan that this film didn't play by the usual rules: “There aren't many punk rock movies, and that is a punk rock movie.”

Ethan Hawke on Repo Man (1984)

Roundly dismissed in its own time, the Russ Meyer–directed, Roger Ebert–penned camp classic became a formative film for Karyn, who was drawn to its surface gloss and buried subversion.

Karyn Kusama on Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (1970)

After repeat viewings BLADE RUNNER embedded in Sophie’s subconscious, even inspiring her approach to costume design. “I was so attracted to the futuristic aspects and the flying cars and the woman running in the see-through trench. That’s the one movie that has visually shaped how I look at things,” she says.

Sophie de Rakoff on Blade Runner (1982)

It took several viewings for Kimberly to fully appreciate the complexity of Roman Polanski’s neo-noir. “Literally every line of that script is just genius,” she says.

Kimberly Peirce on Chinatown (1974)

Mike Nichols’s coming-of-age landmark is a film Reinaldo loves for its capacity to encourage personal introspection.

Reinaldo Marcus Green on The Graduate (1967)

Playing like a real-life true-crime thriller, Oscar-winning director Bryan Fogel’s gripping documentary chronicles the gruesome killing of exiled Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018, a Mafia-style execution seemingly ordered by the kingdom’s ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Adding emotional depth and forensic detail to a widely reported news story, THE DISSIDENT features interviews with key players in this harrowing case of state-sponsored murder, including Khashoggi’s bereaved fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and former CIA chief John O. Brennan. Fogel also widens his focus to profile other brave media campaigners challenging the Saudi regime’s bloodthirsty censorship war against its critics.

The Dissident

Structured in three symphonic movements, this panoramic portrait of Mexico and its peoples from first-time director Helmut Dosantos is visually ravishing and superbly crafted, as much cinematic poem as ethnographic documentary. Also serving as cinematographer and editor, Dosantos switches between color and monochrome as he wordlessly examines the professions, rituals, costumes and lifestyles of Mexico’s indigenous rural population, pointedly labeling chapters with the names of Aztec gods as well as geographic region. Dosantos may dispense with language, but these painterly tableaux speak volumes about the soul of a nation.

Gods of Mexico

Swedish director Göran Hugo Olsson’s archive-heavy documentary condenses hundred of hours of vintage 16mm footage from an incendiary period in American history, originally filmed by Swedish television crews and then largely forgotten for more than 30 years. Featuring interviews with radical icons like Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE covers the birth of the Black Panthers, anti–Vietnam War protests, the Attica prison riots, the devastating effect of heroin in Black communities and more. Featuring a superb soundtrack, plus contemporary commentary from Davis, Questlove, Erykah Badu and others, Olsson’s cinematic history lesson is rich, fascinating and admirably complex.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Prolific Chilean director Raúl Ruiz began work on SOCIALIST REALISM in 1972, but he was forced to abandon it and flee the country the following year, when Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup toppled democratically elected left-wing president Salvador Allende. Although Ruiz died in 2011, this long-shelved project was finally restored, completed and released by his filmmaker widow, Valeria Sarmiento. Interweaving stories of factory workers and leftist intellectuals, Ruiz casts a positive but critical eye on the Allende period, defying documentary naturalism with an antic, lyrical, Godardian spirit. Tragically, the film’s cinematographer Jorge Müller Silva was detained after the coup and remains missing to this day.

Socialist Realism

Drawing on her Ukrainian family heritage, Australian director Kitty Green made a splash with this gutsy debut feature, which she shot while embedded for 14 months with the then-Kyiv-based feminist protest group Femen. Green’s big revelation is how this punky Pussy Riot-style collective, infamous for their headline-grabbing topless stunts, was created and controlled by a shadowy male Svengali, who has since been ejected. But the twist only adds depth and complexity to a close-up study of fearless riot grrrls rebelling against entrenched and violent patriarchal forces—a timely story given a sharper edge since the Maidan Revolution and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine Is Not a Brothel

Senegalese musical superstar, activist and occasional politician Youssou N’Dour is the subject of this engaging documentary from future Oscar-winning director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. N’Dour is widely celebrated as one of Africa’s prime cultural ambassadors on the world stage, but this film chronicles the scandal around his 2004 album EGYPT, a Grammy-winning hit in the U.S. that was boycotted in Senegal for controversially blending music with devotional lyrics steeped in Sufi Islam. Following the singer on tour at home and abroad, Vasarhelyi delivers a rich musical feast, but she also touches on deeper fault lines running through the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape.

Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Best known for her closely observed character studies and quirky period pieces, revered art-house writer-director Kelly Reichardt takes a rare detour into suspense-thriller territory with this gripping crime procedural shot with crisp elegance by Reichardt regular Christopher Blauvelt. A mesmerizing Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard play environmental activists plotting to blow up a dam. A coolly composed, purposely oblique, thought-provoking commentary on the sociopathic underside of righteous idealism. 

Night Moves

Boldly staged and formally daring, Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary shines a light on one of the semi-forgotten atrocities of the Cold War: the state-sponsored mass execution of Indonesian communists and other dissidents following the failed coup of September 1965. With jaw-dropping audacity, Oppenheimer and his codirectors persuade their key interviewees, unpunished and mostly unapologetic killers, to reenact their crimes on camera in the style of gangster and Western movies. Boasting Werner Herzog and Errol Morris as executive producers, the film won international laurels and spawned a 2014 sequel, THE LOOK OF SILENCE.

The Act of Killing

The brutality inflicted on children during Russia’s wars with the breakaway republic of Chechnya is laid bare in Finnish director Pirjo Honkasalo’s documentary triptych, which is relentlessly bleak but also grimly compelling and strikingly beautiful. Alternating between color and monochrome, it comprises self-contained chapters shot at a juvenile military academy near St. Petersburg; in the ruins of the Chechen capital, Grozny; and at a home for war orphans. Gird yourself for stark accounts of inhuman violations committed by Russian soldiers in this award-winning depiction of hell on Earth.

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia

A powerful behind-the-scenes documentary about KHABAR LAHARIYA, an Indian news platform run by women from the socially ostracized Dalit underclass, WRITING WITH FIRE offers an inspirational portrait of courage, determination and grace under pressure. Co-directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh also give this politically charged story a personal dimension, exploring how the publication’s impressively tough editor and two junior reporters wrestle with domestic and family pressures while pursuing high-risk stories about murder and corruption. This Sundance prizewinner became the first ever Indian Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature.

Writing with Fire

Building on her powerful debut film, UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL (2013), Australian director Kitty Green’s superbly crafted short documentary creates a mosaic portrait of contemporary Ukrainian society by utilizing the inspired conceit of screen-testing young girls for an imaginary biopic of gold medal–winning Olympic skater Oksana Baiul. These concise, emotionally charged snapshots reveal less about sport than about the lingering wounds of a war-torn nation still struggling to escape decades of oppression, occupation and ingrained sexism. THE FACE OF UKRAINE: CASTING OKSANA BAIUL won a Jury Prize at Sundance and created the innovative formal template for Green’s award-winning feature documentary CASTING JONBENET (2017).

The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul

A highly original hybrid of documentary, staged drama and experimental essay-film, THE ARBOR pays moving tribute to the British social-realist playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died in 1990 at the tragically young age of 29. Shooting in Dunbar’s impoverished neighborhood in the northern English city of Bradford, director Clio Barnard uses both professional actors and local amateurs to voice verbatim audio interviews by the writer, her family, friends and colleagues. Barnard’s absorbing film also includes restaged scenes from Dunbar’s semi-autobiographical plays, which address issues of class inequality, racism and sexism with a bleak but darkly funny sensibility.

The Arbor

A chilling tale about abuse of power in the corporate workplace, COMPLIANCE draws on a notorious real incident in Kentucky in 2004. Ann Dowd plays Sandra, a fast-food restaurant manager who follows phone instructions from an unseen police officer to detain and interrogate Becky (Dreama Walker), a young employee suspected of theft. As the protocols turn gradually creepier and more sexualized, Sandra begins to suspect she is complicit in a sinister, malicious hoax. Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to heated controversy, director Craig Zobel’s nerve-jangling drama is purposely provocative but also a riveting case study in blind obedience to authority.

Compliance

Highly adept at keeping viewers guessing with her droll narrative swerves and playfully ambivalent tone, Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner ruminates on the mystical power of love, empathy and religious faith in LOURDES, which follows a tour party of sickly pilgrims visiting the French town of the same name. Sylvie Testud gives a luminous performance as Christine, a wheelchair user with severe multiple sclerosis, who appears to undergo a miraculous recovery during her visit to the town, which is celebrated by devout Catholics for its alleged healing properties. A young Léa Seydoux co-stars in Hausner’s delightfully eccentric, magical mystery tour.

Lourdes

Swedish writer-director Isabella Eklöf makes a powerful, unsettling statement with her debut feature, which chronicles the volatile tensions between drug lord Michael (Lai Yde) and his glamorous young girlfriend, Sascha (Vic Carmen Sonne), during a sizzling summer vacation on the Turkish Riviera. HOLIDAY is a blaze of bright colors, gorgeous outfits, luxury villas and sunny beachscapes, but violence and toxic masculinity are ever present, including a sickeningly graphic rape scene shot with jarringly cool detachment. Eklöf’s stylish thriller is purposely spare on dialogue or psychological shading, provocatively daring audiences not to enjoy its slick, sexy, nauseating horror.

Holiday

Chinese writer-director Vivian Qu’s gripping second feature is a tightly controlled, noirish thriller that struck a timely chord with the emerging #MeToo movement. Wen Qi stars as Mia, a 15-year-old hotel worker in a sleepy beach town who faces tough moral choices after witnessing a sexual assault on two underage girls. Because Mia has shaky legal status as an undocumented migrant worker, and the male suspect has powerful government connections, the odds are heavily stacked against justice prevailing in a rigged, sexist system. Qu’s prizewinning depiction of contemporary Chinese society is quietly furious, with a biting political subtext.

Angels Wear White

An international breakthrough for Turkish writer-director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, DISTANT (UZAK) is a somber, hauntingly beautiful portrait of two lost souls struggling to connect in snowy Istanbul. Unemployed factory worker Yusuf (Mehmet Emin Toprak) leaves his village to seek opportunity in the big city, where he stays with his intellectual photographer cousin Mahmut (Muzaffer Özdemir). Both men are dissatisfied, for reasons only hinted at through brooding silences and lyrical long shots. Ceylan’s semi-autobiographical art-house drama won the Grand Prix in Cannes, alongside a posthumous Best Actor award (shared with his co-star) for 28-year-old Toprak, who died in a car accident soon after filming ended.

Distant

Even without subtitles, this classic Italian thriller’s beautiful strangeness and dynamic cinematography left Andrew “fizzing” with fascination.

Andrew Haigh on L'Avventura (1960)

To Andrew, WATERSHIP DOWN is essential viewing for children. He grew to appreciate the film’s themes of loss, suffering and community after watching it again as an adult. “In a strange way, it really has influenced me as a person and the kind of films that I want to make."

Andrew Haigh on Watership Down (1978)

The central theme of camouflage in Billy Wilder’s classic SOME LIKE IT HOT spoke to Andrew during a period of self-discovery.

Andrew Haigh on Some Like It Hot (1959)

Ship of Fools

The Walking Cure

CINEMA'S INVISIBLE INNOVATORS

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES

GODS OF MEXICO

ALL ABOUT MY SISTERS

INVISIBLE NATION

SPOTLIGHT: THE WIM WENDERS FOUNDATION

Wimself Pt. I

Wimself Pt. II

Wimself Pt. III

Wimself Pt. IV

For Ethan, all the pieces come together perfectly in Wim Wenders’s PARIS, TEXAS: “I dare anybody to make something better than that strip club scene.”

Ethan Hawke on Paris, Texas (1984)

The first movie Ethan ever saw was Bob Rafelson’s 1970 drama FIVE EASY PIECES, and its complex, emotionally honest characterizations have stuck with him ever since.

Ethan Hawke on Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Call Her Daddy

Miyazaki's Hidden Worlds

Éric Rohmer's Final Act

Mike Nichols’s heartwarming classic is comfort food for Taylor, who can’t resist the soulful spark that the late Robin Williams brings to the occasion. 

Taylor Russell on The Birdcage (1996)

Maïwenn’s forensic look at the life cycle of a dysfunctional relationship is “a crazy, sexy, heartbreaking, toxic love story that’s very tasteful and French,” says Taylor.

Taylor Russell on My King (2015)

A winning blend of surreal humor, eccentric characters and highly stylized visuals, documentary director Lance Oppenheim’s debut feature is a fascinating exploration of the Villages in Florida, the world’s largest retirement community, a kind of Disneyland for around 130,000 senior citizens. Training his focus on a handful of residents, Oppenheim finds bittersweet vignettes of sadness and joy, love and loneliness, casual sex and recreational drug use in old age. Produced by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, SOME KIND OF HEAVEN is entertaining and warm-hearted, even when it hints at dystopian undercurrents below the surface of this plastic paradise.

Some Kind of Heaven

British writer-director Andrew Haigh is best known as a meticulous chronicler of LGBT love stories on big and small screen, but here he dissects the dynamics of long-term heterosexual marriage with an equally sharp eye. Veteran Britfilm icons Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling co-star as an aging couple whose settled routine of comforting certainties is suddenly rocked by long-dead ghosts from the past. Teasing out the gnawing doubt and latent unease lurking just below the placid surface of suburban domestic life, Haigh’s forensically observed psychodrama won multiple prizes and accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Rampling.

45 Years

Director John Dahl gives vintage film noir tropes a sassy postfeminist twist in this deliciously amoral erotic thriller. Linda Fiorentino is on knockout, career-best form as Bridget Gregory, a sociopathic femme fatale who flees Manhattan with a mountain of illegal drug money stolen from her crooked doctor husband, played by Bill Pullman. Using sex, blackmail and lethal sarcasm to double-cross every drooling male standing in her way, Bridget is a magnetic antiheroine, a material girl living in a material world. Dahl’s hugely enjoyable neo-noir contains winking homages to Billy Wilder’s hard-boiled classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944).

The Last Seduction

With his fondness for icy wastelands and fringe communities, veteran German director Werner Herzog was a natural choice to rework and re-edit this Russian documentary about a vast Siberian woodland that rims the Arctic Circle. The film began as a four-hour TV series directed by Dmitry Vasyukov, aided by Mikhail Tarkovsky, nephew of cinematic legend Andrei. Distilling the material into a single feature, Herzog then added his signature gravel-voiced philosophical commentary, plus a stirring orchestral score. The result is a spellbinding winter wonderland of bleakly beautiful landscapes, stoic frontier lifestyles and dying folk traditions.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

An emotionally charged, politically conscious drama that plays like a modern-day twist on Charles Dickens, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s SHOPLIFTERS is a panoramic portrait of an impoverished Tokyo collective of social outcasts and petty criminals. The head of the household is Osamu (Lily Franky), a wily patriarch who keeps his ramshackle artificial “family” afloat using theft and fraudulent pension claims. He even abducts a young girl (Miyu Sasaki) but for benign, compassionate reasons. Partly inspired by real news stories, Kore-eda’s delicately observed ensemble drama won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Shoplifters

An austere but strikingly beautiful drama about grief, crime, poverty and broken families in the Mississippi Delta, BALLAST is the highly assured debut feature of writer-director Lance Hammer. Micheal J. Smith Sr. plays Lawrence, a man wrestling with suicidal depression following his twin brother’s death, which forces him into a complicated reconciliation with his sister-in-law (Tarra Riggs) and her 12-year-old son (JimMyron Ross). A terrific cast, mostly Black and non-professional, helped improvise their own characters and dialogue from Hammer’s spare script. This humane, quietly powerful family saga won the Best Directing and Best Cinematography awards at Sundance.

Ballast

Married directing duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi (a Galerie curator) and Jimmy Chin first met while working together on this visually spectacular, award-winning documentary, which chronicles a perilous attempt by Chin and his fellow climbers to scale the towering Shark’s Fin rock face of Meru Peak in northern India. MERU is an immersive, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride, thanks not just to its majestic scenery but also its close-up examination of the compulsive risk-taking that almost proves fatal for several of the climbers. Vasarhelyi and Chin have since collaborated on numerous acclaimed features including Oscar-winner FREE SOLO (2018), THE RESCUE (2021) and NYAD (2023).

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