Agnieszka Holland

“La notte of Michelangelo Antonioni. It was one of my favorite of his film actually and I remember watching it on the screen on the big screen last time in '90s again in San Francisco Cinematheque and he was visiting that. He was there and he was sitting in the back of the screening room and I was like passing next to him and he was watching his films and he was crying, so that image will stay with me. So La notte.”

“Parasite, I think I don't have the video. Very revolutionary film. I think it tells about the modern world, about the contemporary world, something extremely disturbing and very, very true. So I would like that film to stay with me as also as a reminder who we are.”

“Very recent films, Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, which I have say I missed in the theaters and I wanted to see it in the theater and I missed it, so I will screen it in my private theater.”

“And Anatomy of a Fall, which was one of the most surprising movies and again the great example of women director's point of view, and we have more and more like powerful and very outspoken women directors and that is good. And I feel a bit like when I was talking to Agnès Varda, she was telling that she is the mother of those directors and I will say she's maybe grandmother of those directors and I can be mother.”

“My last pick will be about the film which I'm rewatching practically any time I'm preparing the film, and especially I did it on the Green Border, and that is the Diamonds of the Night by Jan Němec, one of the auteurs of the absolutely wonderful Czech New Wave, who unfortunately was forced to immigrate and he never achieved the power when working in the West of his early film, but that is a absolute masterpiece. But also it has incredibly long shot when two young men, two boys who escaped from the transportation to the concentration camp, they are running through the forest and through the valley, and it was before drones and kind of the, you know, incredible cranes. It was just made with such a energy and talent and the innovation, personal innovation of the filmmakers, and it's so effective and so incredibly engaging that, as I said, I rewatch it before any film I'm doing.”

“So first I will pick, it will be the box, very heavy one, of Agnès Varda. Two films of her which I was watching as a teenager in Warsaw made such an impact on me that I can say that it's also because of her that I became a filmmaker. One it was Cléo from 5 to 7, but second one was the revelation to me and till now I'm advising it to the young filmmakers and especially women filmmakers to watch and to see how it is possible to say so much with such a little, little means. That is Le Bonheur, Happiness. It's my favorite. I hope that I'm following her path.”