"I would say it’s one of my all-time favorite movies. There were times in my life when I had to watch Sans Soleil once a year, and I could because there was a cinema in Vienna that used to show it every summer. On one hand, it’s a perfect and artistic movie, but on the other, it’s like the basis of moviemaking. It’s an essay film dealing with documentary material, and it transforms it into a poetic idea of the world. For me, it’s the highlight of documentary filmmaking."

"I saw this in the cinema in France and was so blown away by it. I also read the book. The Piano Teacher was super important for Invisible Life as well, because there is a certain cruelty Haneke works with, particularly in this film, that helped me in adapting my story. The book that Invisible Life is based on is very sweet and very light, but I wanted to look at the characters from a different standpoint, and The Piano Teacher helped me think about that in terms of performance."

"When I became a film academic in the 1980s, I was allocated a class through which I discovered silent (or rather non-sync-sound) films. I had never appreciated the extraordinary beauty of this cinema and, most of all, I loved films of the very late twenties, made on the cusp of the transition—for instance, Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld and The Docks of New York. People on Sunday is an amazing film document of Berlin just before the Nazis came to power, and is also a “young modern woman” film."

"I gotta throw a musical in there, and I’d go with The Band Wagon. Singin’ in the Rain is more exuberant, but [Vincent] Minnelli is one of my favorite stylists in cinema. You know, I love {Fred] Astaire, and I’m crazy about that film. I’ve loved it since I was in high school. Often, these favorites come and go, and they change position on your list, and you make room for other things that maybe you didn’t appreciate as strongly when you were younger, but I’ve always been crazy about that movie."

"As clearly as there is only one Lino Ventura, there is a sole Jean Gabin. Neither have I seen a replica of Michèle Morgan nor Michel Simon (one of the reasons why Renoir’s Boudu should be in this list, but . . .). Port of Shadows is a pure actor-based melodrama full of prewar pessimism. Bicycle Thieves proves that even the tiniest dreams can be torn to pieces. Never in the history of cinema has hope been served in so minimalistic but heartbreaking a way as in the last shot of this masterpiece."

"As clearly as there is only one Lino Ventura, there is a sole Jean Gabin. Neither have I seen a replica of Michèle Morgan nor Michel Simon (one of the reasons why Renoir’s Boudu should be in this list, but . . .). Port of Shadows is a pure actor-based melodrama full of prewar pessimism. Bicycle Thieves proves that even the tiniest dreams can be torn to pieces. Never in the history of cinema has hope been served in so minimalistic but heartbreaking a way as in the last shot of this masterpiece."

"Well I guess this is cheating because it’s 10 movies, but I like [Krzysztof Kieślowski’s] Decalogue a lot. That’s one director I was sad when he passed away, because I would have loved to have worked with him — although he never really worked with American actors. I love all of his films but Decalogue is very satisfying. When I watched it for the first time I saw them all in two days, as this little cinema in London. I watched five the first day and the second five the next day."