Brady Corbet

“Well, I’ll start with The Leopard. Visconti, very important filmmaker for me and has had an extraordinary influence on all of my work, especially my first film, The Childhood of a Leader. Some of the most extraordinary sequences, I think, in the history of the medium. So, will take that.”

“Death in Venice, to continue with Visconti, I watch it every single year.”

“The Damned, going with more Visconti. It’s not a box set, but it is now.”

“Marketa Lazarová. One of the great unsung masterpieces of Czech cinema. It’s funny, because I used to always say that the one period that I never wanted to work on was the medieval period, and yet many of my favorite films, The Virgin Spring, Andrei Rublev, and Marketa, are the exception to that rule.”

“I’m going to do the same thing with Salò, one of my favorite films of all time. Funnily, Michael Haneke gave me Salò as a wrap gift on the set of Funny Games many years ago. And it was the first Criterion edition of this, a film that I already knew and loved, but it came with a beautiful note from Michael that sits on our little shelf of treasures in the House. I’m happy to see that Salò is not included in this box set, so I got this plus Salò. Like the work of the great Marquis de Sade, stil...”

“Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent. One of the greatest directors in the history of the medium. She was married to Elem Klimov and died too young. She’s someone that I think about often, reference, and I cherish all of her four pictures that she made before she passed away.”

“This I actually already have, so I’m not going to take it. I just want to call out Mia Hansen-Løve, one of my favorite directors, that I worked with years ago on a film called Eden. This is her film Bergman Island, and I encourage everyone to seek it out because I think she is one of our great contemporary treasures.”

“Oh! The Mother and the Whore. Oh, the absolute best. Just one of these films that, you know, it’s so hypnotic and, for some reason, at four hours long or whatever, you can rewatch it again and again and discover something new. It’s really just one of the greatest.”

“And then we finally have the Dekalog, which is maybe the greatest achievement in the history of cinema.”

“Finally, the World of Wong Kar Wai.”

“The work of Pasolini I’ve already mentioned, although I’m happy to see that Salò is not included in this box set, so I got this plus Salò. Like the work of the great Marquis de Sade, still has the ability to shock and move in a way that few dare to even to this day.”