"I’m choosing Breillat’s film because it pulls me in and disturbs me. I’ll never forget that long push-and-pull seduction scene in the bedroom, which Breillat re-created in 2002’s Sex Is Comedy, or the sense of mounting menace that finally explodes. I don’t know how she does it, but she coaxes her actors into very private, intimate places. I imagine the process is born of deep trust, but it’s tough. As a director, it’s difficult to push people that far. Take this as a stand-in for many other films directed by women that, for whatever reason, aren’t in this collection: Claire Denis’s Beau travail being the obvious one that comes to mind, though there are many others."

"I was doing an assistant editor job in Prague for three months, and I brought with me about fifteen Bergman DVDs. Bizarrely, I was working on Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson during the day and coming home to Persona in the evening. It was not necessarily good for my state of mind, but it was an amazing cinematic education. It’s virtually impossible to choose a favorite from his films, so I’ll choose two. I do think, though, that Cries and Whispers sums up what it means to be human—the moment when Agnes screams out in agony to her sisters as they stand by her deathbed “Can anyone help me?” and of course they can’t, or they won’t. Holy fuck."