Camila Mendes

“This one right here. Starting strong. The Great Beauty. This is one of my favorite films. I love Paolo Sorrentino so much. I don’t know what it is about watching a 65-year-old man contemplate his life and sort of have an existential Crisis. That just really resonates with me. Jep Gambardella is his name. And I kind of love films that are essentially about nothing, but they’re not about nothing. They’re about so much. The themes are so deep, but nothing really big happens. And I think this mov...”

“Triangle of Sadness, another one of my favorites. Ruben Östlund is a director I would love to work with one day. The fact that it’s sort of three films in one, three different parts, three different themes. And then there’s that iconic sequence when they’re eating on the yacht, and all the elite are eating sort of what’s essentially Michelin jello. And also the first part, the back-and-forth between A Man and a Woman talking about gender roles, and this really nuanced dynamic that is so inter...”

“Oh, Nicole Kidman in The Others. I remember watching this… I had just got out of the shower in middle school, maybe, and my mom was watching it in her bedroom, and I just sort of sat on her bed in my towel and couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I don’t like anything that’s remotely, like, horror. I get really scared. I’m a big scaredy-cat, and I was really creeped out by this film, but I couldn’t look away. And the plot twist. Alejandro Amenábar, he’s so good at creating suspense.”

“Tótem. I recently watched this film. I was doing research for a project that we’re developing at my company, Honor Role, and… Wow. Lila Avilés, she does slice-of-life so flawlessly. You just feel like you’re living in someone’s family dynamic the whole time. And this little girl that she discovered. There’s something so amazing about watching the discovery of a young actress, a child actor who is just so tuned in to their instincts. I think that’s so impressive. She is one to watch.”

“The Before Trilogy. Before Sunrise, of course, is my favorite. And what Richard Linklater captured in Before Sunrise is so hard to do. You’re just watching two people walk and talk for an entire film, and you’re not bored, you’re so in it, because everyone knows what it feels like to have that feeling of falling in love in real time and sharing intimate moments with a complete stranger. This movie is just so, so beautiful and captures the nuance of falling in love perfectly.”