Kitty Green

“I’m worried about you all alone there. I wish you could just be home with us.” I stumbled across this film when I was homesick in New York City, and it tapped into everything that I was going through at the time. A film made up of a series of letters from Chantal’s worried mother, it is an incredible portrait of a relationship between mother and daughter that doubles as a ’70s New York City time capsule.

Larisa Shepitko is a master Soviet filmmaker, born in Eastern Ukraine, whose career was cut tragically short when she was killed in a car crash at age 41. The Ascent is a harrowing story of two young men in World War II, a soldier and a math teacher, on a mission to find food to feed their village. A transcendent film that proves Shepitko was far ahead of her time.

I was given a video camera at age 11 and started shooting in my backyard with my Barbie dolls. When I stumbled upon a bootleg VHS copy of Superstar, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Perhaps what I had been playing with all along was cinema? Superstar is a playful and provocative portrait of the life of Karen Carpenter.

I adore this film. Julianne Moore is exquisite. It’s so strange and unsettling and it unravels so beautifully. The figure in the desert still haunts me. Safe is my favorite of Todd’s films.

My mother left a copy of The Piano Teacher for me to watch in a Blockbuster video case. I pushed the tape into the VCR with no idea what I was getting into. Elegant yet brutal, The Piano Teacher is a masterpiece.

Is it a dream? Is it a nightmare? Mulholland Drive is my favorite of Lynch’s films, a portrait of a wannabe Hollywood star who falls into the Los Angeles underbelly. The imagery and texture have stuck with me. Love that pink paint.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days tells the story of two young women trying to obtain an illegal abortion in Romania in the 1980s. The film is set over a riveting 24-hour period. Mungiu is a virtuoso of tension. 

My mother is a photographer and art teacher and she always raves about Jessica Hausner’s composition. Hausner has an exquisite eye. Every frame is so delicately composed. Lourdes is divine.

watch now

Clio Barnard presents us with an innovative portrait of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Casting actors to lip-synch to audio interviews with Andrea’s family and friends, Barnard weaves reenactments together with performances of Dunbar’s plays. The Arbor was a great inspiration for my nonfiction work. A film that dares to push at the boundaries of the form.

watch now

Compliance is wild, based on a story too strange to be true. Zobel has transformed the account of a group of employees at a fast-food restaurant, who were unwittingly involved in a devastating sexual assault, into a tense feature about power dynamics.

A cinematographer on over 40 feature documentaries, Kirsten Johnson is an ingenious image-maker. She grapples with the meaning of it all here, in Cameraperson. A patchwork portrait of her life and decades-spanning career.

A beautifully sensitive film about a horrific assault on two young girls in a seaside town in China. Angels Wear White is a hidden gem.

watch now

A cheeky film about a young woman on holiday with her drug-dealer boyfriend that also contains one of the most devastating depictions of sexual violence I’ve seen onscreen. Released at the beginning of the #MeToo movement, Eklöf’s film plays with gender dynamics in its own way.

watch now

I never thought I’d enjoy a film about beekeeping, but Honeyland is a treat. A gorgeous and mesmerizing portrait of a woman who’s trying to make ends meet by harvesting honey in the mountains of North Macedonia.

There is so much warmth and love in Garrett Bradley’s work. Time, along with its incredible soundtrack by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, blew me away. Centered around the family life of prison abolitionist Sibil “Fox Rich” Richardson, this is a gorgeous and expansive film with a unique sensibility.