Nuri Bilge Ceylan

“This movie Stranger Than Paradise also very important for me. It seems quite simple, but there is a whole life in it. I think all kind of emotions in life is involved in this film somehow and for me it never ages.”

“Oh, I see Andrei Rublev here. Its style is incredible because you know the Tarkovsky's first movie is a good film, but you can't, you can't talk about the style a lot, but in his second movie, such a change. How did he reach that style in just in the second movie? It's incredible. Also in content, it's very impressive I think.”

“Knife in the Water. When I start cinema, I come across with this movie and it influenced me a lot. You know, just in a boat, three person, a camera, a great movie. You don't need luxury in cinema to make a good movie, I think, and sometimes luxury even be a burden.”

“The Bergman here. I come across with Bergman at a very young age, at 16 years old. Like I saw his The Silence in Cinematheque in Istanbul. It was just a surprise because like the films I saw before, before The Silence, the cinema just like an entertainment for me. But with this movie I, I understood that the cinema is something else. You can put all your problems, all your sicknesses, everything in, in a movie. And after that, I watched all Bergman movies one by one. I searched for them. But in those days, it was not easy. And there was no videotapes and there was no Cinematheque, it's closed after the I watched it. And, but somehow I went New York and sometimes London to watch the other movies of Bergman.”

“Six Moral Tales, I think this is a very good box. It's very valuable. Rohmer, I think one of the most important filmmakers in the world for me. As if there is nothing happens, but everything happens there. That's the kind of movie I like most.”

“Yeah, this is also quite very important for me in my young times. Apu Trilogy from Satyajit Ray. I can understand it maybe better because my childhood was not so far from, from this childhood. Great art.”

“Kiarostami. I first saw at Istanbul Film Festival the his movie Where Is the Friend's House? And I didn't know Kiarostami at that time and I liked the movie a lot and I, it was incredible to me and next years when I come across Through the Olive Trees it was a huge shock for me. I, it didn't look like any film I saw before. It was completely a different type of cinema, but I liked it a lot. Every single moment of this movie made a huge impression on me. Also, the there are cultural similarities between Iran and Turkey, I think. And it made me the courage to make cinema. This smell of life you can feel in every single movie of him.”