"A group of teenagers, led by Cliff Richard, rally together to stop a theatre being demolished. They succeed by putting on a show there. The Young Ones is a gorgeous fantasy, so optimistic and beautiful, about the potential of pop music for young people. It made me want to join a youth theatre, which I did a few years later, and it introduced the six-year-old me to the thrill of both pop music and theatre. They’re still thrilling me today."

"Tokyo Story is a beautiful document of a specific time, place, and culture. The drama is grounded and driven by what it meant to take care of a family in postwar Japan; the narrative is firmly rooted in history. At the same time, the story transcends this context so easily. We see ourselves in this family. We relate to their flaws, joys, and fears. Watching this film gives us the opportunity to reflect on our own lives; it is a gift."

"Two great films about the search for meaning in the face of death. The scenes in which the main characters come to terms with their existence—the scene on the swing in the park with the snow falling in Ikiru, and the final scene in Wild Strawberries, where the main character calls across time to his parents and the past—are so powerful and beautiful. It saddens me that most modern-day films don’t approach this level of art and emotion."

"Two great films about the search for meaning in the face of death. The scenes in which the main characters come to terms with their existence—the scene on the swing in the park with the snow falling in Ikiru, and the final scene in Wild Strawberries, where the main character calls across time to his parents and the past—are so powerful and beautiful. It saddens me that most modern-day films don’t approach this level of art and emotion."

"Badlands is one of those movies that you wish you had made yourself. Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen are incredible, and while the plot is simple, the film is a deep portrait not only of its characters but of a generation. It’s full of mystery, and the use of voice-over is so beautiful. I keep coming back to it before preproduction on my films because there’s something brutally poetic about it that I just adore. It triggers my wish to make things."

"Hydrangeas are the flowers that tint the shots of this beautiful film. My grandmother was called Hortensia (hydrangeas in Spanish). These are the flowers of my childhood. The film reaches its melancholic note through a floral invasion. It is quite moving and transporting to experience how the room in the theater is filled with their purple. The film explores “fakeism” as an evolution of realism, with color as its main artery. Purple runs through the veins that keep our hearts pumping."

"This is sheer bliss and existential wonderment. It should be required viewing—not just for filmmakers but for people in general. It stitches together all the Apollo missions into one beautiful trip to the moon and back. The voice-overs from the astronauts are so poignant—these are men who have been to the moon and have seen things that none of us will ever see, yet they are so humbled by it. It’s magical. As is the score by Brian Eno!"

"Reading Their Eyes for perhaps the eleventh time, I am still amazed. .. that it speaks to me as no novel, past or present, has ever done; and that the language of the characters, that ‘comical nigger dialect’ that has been laughed at, denied, ignored, or ‘improved’ so that white folks and educated black folks can understand it, is simply beautiful. There is enough self-love in that one book – love of community, culture, traditions – to restore a world. Or create a new one."

"I think it's the most singularly beautiful and sad piece of music ever written. I don't often listen to it - you need to treat it with respect. I've heard some people say that it changes your molecular structure when you listen to it - I don't know if that's true but it definitely does something to you that's special. I wouldn't have appreciated it when I was younger so it's a recent record that I love. All three movements in that symphony are incredible."

"This book is one of those beautiful accounts of a terrible time in our history. His calm and sagaciousness, while witnessing one horror after another played out during his time in three separate concentration camps, is awe inspiring. He speaks to the strength of the human spirit and there is a sentence in the book that made me put it down and think — ‘I stopped asking myself what I expected out of life, and asked myself what life expected out of me."