Rodrigo Prieto

“Kwaidan. This movie I pick because I'm about to embark on a new chapter of my career. I'm going to direct the movie, an adaptation of Pedro Páramo which is this very famous Mexican novel. My daughter Maria recommended this film because it's an anthology of I think it's four or five ghost stories. It's very tactile, you see the artificiality of it and I think this movie for me is a reminder that anything goes in cinema.”

“I'm going to start with the film that actually I shot and the reason is that we recently did this remastering of the movie, so it's a new color grading. The original video color timing was done without our supervision. Alejandro González and myself, Amores perros, we use the film print to make this version of it, so it's much closer to the way people experienced it on a cinema. So I'm excited about that and I'm taking it home to have this version.”

“I'll take Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. I remember being so struck by the color and the cinematography of it. Years later I got the chance to work with Almodóvar in a movie called Broken Embraces in which we actually emulated this film in one of the sequences and I used a specific film emulsion that was Ektachrome because the colors were especially saturated on that film stock. In honor of that moment I'll take Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

“Raging Bull, my favorite film. Also just stylistically it's amazing. For me it was a huge discovery of sound for example, the sound design this movie is really incredible because you feel the world around them, the tenements where Scorsese grew up. I've been working with Mr. Martin Scorsese for a while, I've been doing a few movies. It all started with The Wolf of Wall Street.”

“Yes, Rumble Fish. Okay, an oldie but goodie for me. And the sound, again, the sound was amazing. The main character, Motorcycle Boy, he if I remember correctly couldn't hear well so the sound is very much like it would be, the sound is somehow muffled. It's artificial but it's subjective and I found that really interesting. That connection between image and sound is essential in cinema.”

“Yes, After Life. This film is so beautiful and the whole premise is that people die, go to this building and they're interviewed by these people who are actually working the place and they have to say a moment in their lives that they'd be willing to live to eternity. These people just saying these very simple moments that they remember as the most cherished moment of their lives is truly wonderful. Life-changing movie, I highly recommend.”