Lukas Dhont

A teacher in film school showed us Grey Gardens. I remember it made me doubt for a long time whether I wanted to continue in documentary because I saw so much of its possibilities realized in this film. The desire of being seen here is so beautifully captured. How we love to be actors sometimes. 
 

This was an incredibly important film for me in understanding what I wanted to do with cinema. It is the film that changed me most. I saw it at the very start of film school—until that point, a theater had been mainly a place of escape for me. I think I rejected the film at first, before it started to haunt me. Chantal Akerman showed me that by placing the camera right next to me, I could uncover something, could unlock a way of looking. It made me rethink past and future. 

Bigger than us. A symphony in black and white. While a herd of cows struggles through the mud, plans are made within an agricultural community to run away with the last remaining money. But hopelessness paralyzes the residents into cycles of drinking, dancing and waiting. One of the most contemplative and transformative viewing experiences in the world of the moving image. 

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This film meant a great deal to me in thinking about the use of movement, of rhythm, of choreography. Gus Van Sant is a painter, freezing the moment of a high school massacre. Minimizing all reasoning and emotion makes this such a rich exploration of darkness and the unexpected corners it grows in. I love how Van Sant is influenced by both Stanley Kubrick and Chantal Akerman, the American underground scene and the European radicalism of the ’70s. 

Nicole. Kidman. I remember watching this and being both intensely disturbed and equally amazed. Birth intertwines illusion, projection and reality with an overwhelming sensory impact. Jonathan Glazer is the king of shape-shifting. Every film he makes is a stand-alone art piece. 

Sometimes there are scenes that stay with us. We may forget big parts of a film, but there are scenes that stick. There is a scene in this film of a boy saying goodbye to his mother that replays in my head way too often. Probably because it’s one of my primal fears. This film in three pieces illuminates the emotional devastation wrought on youngsters who have little or no understanding of the historical and political reasons behind a conflict, and it shows how the seeds of hatred are instilled in young minds. 

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Red Road is a mysterious maze of gazes.  
 

Immediately connected to my inner outsider. It made me revisit Agnès Varda’s Vagabond —a film I love to the same extent. Wendy and Lucy has an end sequence destined to break my heart over and over again. Kelly Reichardt’s work shows me (dis)comfort in the use of time and space like no other. There is a purity and intimacy here that never ceases to amaze me.  

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I remember thinking: This film feels like it’s inventing something. Reinterpreting and reframing words. I felt fluid afterward. A film shock, a recalibration at the start of my own film journey. The absurdity of violence, of power, of control. With one of my favorite dance sequences of all time. 

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A lesson in layers. A study of the ego. Glazed facades of corporate skyscrapers, subway trains, wintry streets and pickup nightclubs. Brandon moves through them like the metronome of the metropolis, looking for a way to kill his solitude. This film is as much about what’s held out of the frame as what’s inside. 

I was working in a cinema when this film first came out in theaters and had many confused audience members who felt like I had sold them tickets to a National Geographic documentary instead of a film with Brad Pitt. When I first discovered the film, I was blown away by its freedom. A delicate poem that gently moves between the universal and the personal. This film is both grandiose and incredibly intimate, one I rewatch every time before I shoot a film and work with actors. 

Kid is the third feature by one of Belgium’s most talked-about filmmakers. Her pieces have transformed over the years. With an incredible sense of humor, Fien Troch confronts our most important relationships. There is something intrinsically Flemish about this film, as if I’m seeing a part of my own childhood in the Flemish countryside—the cows, the mud, the parking lots—reflected back at me. The soundtrack by Gospodi creates a strong spiritual dimension. 

We would go see Dolan’s films with our classmates in film school, and his pieces would always spark passionate conversation. What happens in our relationships when we change? How do we grow apart or together? The closer we get to someone, the more one can become a total mystery. A piece about how love also accompanies someone on their personal trajectory of becoming. 

Moonlight is a masterful symphony. It’s a monumental piece of cinema. I’m jealous of everyone who created it. We build parts for ourselves to protect us. We construct armors and walls to make people not see us. I have rarely seen this expressed with such clarity. 

A dark jewel. Loveless can be seen not only as a drama of marital dysfunction but as a fierce metaphorical indictment of the society these people were raised in. 

Passionate about both documentary and fiction, this is a film in which many desires merge for me. Chloé Zhao was inspired by meeting Brady Jandreau and built the film around him, which is the best reminder to stay curious and look around us, always. A tender gaze on a world that so often is represented without one. The notion of pain as something to be desired, as something that comes with a price or a prize.

The puzzling power of ambiguity. There is poetry and mystery to Burning that allows our imagination to run free. A longing for something beyond reach. An imagining very connected to the art of cinema itself. And an invitation to look again. It is about the creation of other worlds, and those who disappear within them. 

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Sébastien proves time and time again that he is one of the most humanist filmmakers working today. Little Girl shows so elegantly how a norm to some is an alien concept to another. It is about finding home in our bodies, about protecting the truest form of ourselves, even if it comes with sacrifice. A maestro of the moving image. 

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