Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij

“Klute, this is actually connected to the story we just finished telling. It's Jane Fonda's best Performance, she's so arresting in it. This was a really big inspiration in its lighting design for A Murder at the End of the World. I love Pakula so much because I feel like he's one of the few filmmakers that there's no ego. I admire him because I don't ever feel like his ego is involved in the filmmaking. He is using exactly the shots that need to be there to communicate the story correctly.”

“Time Bandits. I haven't seen this. This is an interesting film. When I was a kid, my grandmother had just died and my mom and dad were very sad. I was watching a TV in the hotel and this movie showed up and it was three-quarters of the way in and this movie blew my mind. The freedom in the story—it's not limited by anything and of course time travel.”

“Blood Simple. Oh my god, Frances McDormand. If you've not seen this movie, her Performance in this—how old was she when she did this? Also to see something that's not made for an enormous budget but feels big. One of the things that we always use this film as a reference for is there's a wall of photographs in Blood Simple and all the photographs are real 35mm prints. Whenever we make a movie these days we say we've got to take real 35mm photographs to make it feel this real.”

“The Double Life of Véronique. My parents showed me the Double Life maybe I was 13 and I was blown away. I was really drawn to a female lead, to the metaphysical aspects, but also the groundedness and the beauty. We would write something and call Irène Jacob and be like, 'Do you want to come play with us because we love Double Life of Véronique and Red so much?' And she did. This film works because the actress at the center of this has such a purity in their soul.”

“After Life. I actually think this is very relevant for our work, which is funny that we haven't talked about it because it's such an interesting way of talking about the metaphysical without any science fiction bells or whistles. Very grounded in the mundane but not in a quirky way. Using metaphor—sometimes I think maybe the afterlife really will be like a late 90s version of some building. I love discovering something that you can't believe you don't know.”

“Drive My Car. It left such an impression on me. I love stories of unexpected friendships that are not love affairs, but this relationship between this man and this girl who becomes his driver—they do something for each other that nobody else in their lives can do for them. Also this movie is an amazing meditation on storytelling and the art of storytelling because everyone in it is a storyteller. When there's that death 20 minutes in, for two days I couldn't stop thinking about it.”