"I saw this recently for the first time. Had I seen it earlier, it would have had to have been a huge influence. Never too late!"

"Because I lived in the country during the war, I saw films for the first time in London circa 1945/1946 . . . I saw Nanook of the North and The River around this time and both left distinct images in my memory. But, in common with many other girls at the time and, indeed, ever since, I would choose The Red Shoes as my first formative film."

"RoboCop fucked me up when I first saw it. It’s set in Detroit, where I’m from, and it’s just so brutal. The first movie I ever saw was Terminator 2, when I was five—my parents clearly weren’t checking what I was watching at that age. With RoboCop, you’re getting the truth, but you have no idea that what it’s telling you is actually the truth."

"The first Tarkovsky I saw was Nostalgia, and I kept asking myself, how can someone have done this? Where does this mind come from? Later, I saw Andrei Rublev for the first time at Anthology. What I love about it is that it just hits you in places you don’t expect—the composition of the shots and how he fills them with emotion is so beautiful."

"I saw that film and I don’t like to cry in movies — I don’t think anybody does — just because it’s embarrassing, but I was sobbing in that film. It was such a beautiful story. It was this little film that spoke volumes and emotions were just so real and it just moved me. And honestly, I saw it at a time where I’d grown up loving movies and there was a period where suddenly it seemed like everything coming out was the same and I started getting annoyed and then I saw Central Station and Life is Beautiful within months (of each other) and it restored my faith in film-making."

"Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor’s chemistry is a benchmark for me. I first saw this in film school and it changed the way I make movies forever"

"Such beautiful writing and storytelling and visual imagery. I never saw the movie made from this book as the book itself is a movie in my imagination."