Comments

I’ve tried to impose several conditions on myself in order to create this list. The criteria is as follows: films that gave me the impression of watching something really important; films that provoked a creative impulse in me, causing me either to start shooting or writing; films that I felt forced to recommend to everybody around me. Obviously there are far more than ten films that fulfil those conditions. I guess that the obvious absences – why Grémillon and not Renoir, for instance? Why Biette and not Godard or Straub or Rohmer? Why Tourneur and not Lang or Dwan? Why Schroeter and not Fassbinder? All of them are filmmakers I deeply love – create a territory that may speak more of myself, even beyond my comprehension, while the ten films are present on the list say more, I hope, about a certain idea of cinema. A last note on the absences: I didn’t include any Russian, Japanese or Portuguese films (among but above other nationalities) for two reasons: first, I don’t think I know those film from those countries enough; second, I had the strange feeling that if I chose a single film from any of those countries, the whole list would had to be filled with ten films from that same country. I decided to follow this principle with films from the silent period too, for the same reasons – the only silent film included is, as you may see, quite a weird choice.