"I actually first discovered a lot of the films on this list, like News from Home, when I lived in New York, next to Kim’s Video, a time when I went a lot to Anthology Film Archives and Lincoln Center. Chantal Akerman has always been a big inspiration for me, and News from Home was the first film of hers that I saw. Watching it was so inspiring and made me feel like I could make movies myself, because it’s so simply done yet so affecting—just letters and an empty city. I have a very strong relationship with my mother, and she also used to send me letters when I lived in New York. I discovered Jeanne Dielman later, and a lot of the screen tests I did for Invisible Life were taken from frames from that film."

"And of course there’s Fellini, who has been with me most of my life. I remember seeing La dolce vita in the sixties as a kid. I couldn’t follow all of it and dropped off a few times, but some scenes stayed with me forever. Like the sea monster with the staring eye at the end of the film and the young girl shouting something to Marcello, who can’t hear her. Later I fell in love with Amarcord and 8½. The latter has become one of these comfort films I go back to watch every now and again, to reassure myself about the point of it all. It’s about being an artist and an impostor, and the endlessly complicated relations between men and women. There’s a freedom and honesty about these films, and each one has a form all its own."