Nia DaCosta

“Okay, I love that this is the first thing I’m finding, actually: Love & Basketball. Amazing film, but also I remember growing up and realizing that Gina Prince-Bythewood made a movie and I was like, “Oh, I can make movies. Great.” And this was in my dorm when I was in middle school and we just watched it over and over and over again. But I’ve never owned it and I’ve never had it, so I’m glad to get the Criterion edition of this.”

“Come and See. This one– this movie is devastating. Very different from Love & Basketball. And it’s one of those films that for me talks about the actual human impact of war. It’s not bombastic, it’s not patriotic, it’s not jingoistic. It’s literally about what happens to the soul, to the heart, to the mind.”

“And it reminds me of another film that I really want to find, which is Cranes Are Flying. Again, about World War Two and the human impact of the war on the Soviet psyche, but also on anyone. So these two movies, I think, are an excellent but also devastating double bill that I will be doing very soon.”

“I’m gonna have to… I mean, Barry Lyndon. This movie, I realized recently how much of an impact it’s had on my filmmaking, on my feelings about Ryan O’Neal. It’s so good. The score, the way he… I mean, it’s Kubrick, so I don’t have to say much, but I love this and it made me read the book, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which is phenomenal and it actually really made me love this even more, because it’s an amazing work of adaptation. You have to watch it. You have to watch it.”

“This is one of my favorite films ever made. It’s Summer Hours by Olivier Assayas, and it’s such a simple story. It’s about this family whose– the matriarch passes away, the mother of these three kids, two of whom live, I think, out of France and one who lives in France, and they have to figure out what to do with her house and all their… I think, her uncle’s things. He was an artist. And it’s just a beautiful story about family and about legacy, and it’s beautifully shot. Juliette Binoche is in it and I love her. This is an excellent film. If you haven’t seen it, you need to. Get in there right now.”

“Power of the Dog. Let me tell you something. When that young man walked to look at birds and everyone was cussing him out and throwing homophobic slurs at him and he said not a word, he didn’t care, he didn’t look at them, and then they were just silent when he walked back, I was like, “Oh, that’s power. That is power.” And it really changed something in me when I saw that scene. This whole movie, I think, is immaculate. And Jane Campion is, obviously, the woman, the myth, the legend, so Power of the Dog.”

“Phoenix, this is one of the first Nina Hoss films that I watched. It’s an amazing story. Again, post-World War Two. I’m obsessed. And it’s about a woman who is presumed to have died during the Holocaust and reappears, but has to pretend to be the woman that she was, if that makes sense. And it’s Nina Hoss being, I mean, one of the most stunning actors of her generation. I’ve just worked with her on my current film that’s coming out, Hedda, and… began my Nina Hoss love affair. So this is… I’m so glad to find this.”

“Okay, I’ve seen a lot of stuff, so I think now I’m going to close my eyes and see what the Closet brings me. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, so that was excellent. My soul really knows what I need and want. I don’t know who doesn’t love Twin Peaks. I think every iteration of it, every… The movies, the new show, the original, I… I love this man and I love this work. So this is really… I feel really lucky to have found this one, because I don’t know if I would have seen it otherwise. And it’s director-approved. All right.”

“Oh my gosh. This Agnès Varda box set, which has, I think, all of her films: The Complete Films of Agnès Varda. So one of my favorite of Agnès Varda’s films is the documentary The Gleaners and I. And it’s essentially about people, gleaners, who… they, like, collect food that’s not being sold. But it’s also about herself as a documentarian, as a filmmaker, how she gleans images and shows you things that maybe people would discard, and there’s this really lovely scene where she’s, I think, shooting out of a car window and then she says, “I glean this,” and you see her hand come into frame and take the image, in a way, and it’s… it’s really lovely. It’s really fun.”