Claudio Gnoli

My favourite film directors

1. Krzysztof Kieślowski (17/23 films seen, favourite: Red)
2. Billy Wilder (17/26, The apartment *)
3. Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne (8/10, The son)
4. Éric Rohmer (25/25, Rendezvous in Paris)
5. Woody Allen (31/45, The purple rose of Cairo)
6. Edgar Reitz (11/18, Heimat 2)
7. Mike Leigh (Vera Drake)
8. Luis Buñuel (The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie *)
9. Jacques Tati (Playtime)
10. Max Ophüls (The earrings of madame de...)
11. Hayao Miyazaki (Kiki's delivery service)
12. Ingmar Bergman (Sawdust and tinsel)
13. Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove)
14. Emir Kusturica (Life is a miracle)
15. Otar Iosseliani (Chasing butterflies)

Fatih Akın (Soul Kitchen), Pedro Almodóvar (Volver), Robert Altman (The players), Roy Andersson (A pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence), Marco Bellocchio (My mother's smile), Luis García Berlanga (The executioner), Bong Joon Ho (Parasite), Serge Bourguignon (Sundays and Cybele), Stéphane Brizé (Not here to be loved), Claude Chabrol (The unfaithful wife), René Clair (The million), Henri-Georges Clouzot (Quai des Orfèvres), Bruno Dumont (Ma Loute), Blake Edwards (The Pink Panther), Asghar Farhadi (The past), Federico Fellini (Rome), Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), Michel Gondry (The science of sleep), Alfred Hitchcock (Rear window), Jim Jarmusch (Paterson), Aki Kaurismäki (I hired a contract killer), Abdellatif Kechiche (Games of love and chance), Kim Ki-Duk (3-Iron), Takeshi Kitano (Dolls), Cédric Klapisch (L'auberge espagnole), Fritz Lang (M), Ernst Lubitsch (To be or not to be), Mario Monicelli (Cops and robbers), Cristian Mungiu (Graduation), Elio Petri (Todo modo), Francesco Rosi (Christ stopped at Eboli), Walter Salles (Central do Brasil), Robert Siodmak (The spiral staircase), Aleksandr Sokurov (Russian ark), Mauritz Stiller (Erotikon), Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (Padre padrone), Lars von Trier (Dogville), François Truffaut (Love on the run), Carlo Verdone (Love is eternal while it lasts), Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian clan), Paolo Virzì (Your whole life ahead of you), Jasmila Žbanić (Grbavica)

These lists only include directors of at least two films that I have seen. To be considered after seeing a second film: Ildikó Enyedi, Jean Epstein, Alberto Lattuada, Dalibor Matanić, Alice Rohrwacher.

In brackets is my favourite film for each director. Favourite films overall are marked with an asterisk.

From these results, I can conclude I most often like directors depicting contemporary Western life in a realistic way (Dardenne, Rohmer, Leigh), looking for positive human values but with an antirhetorical or even cynical eye (Wilder, Buñuel, Altman), especially when embarking in ambitious, radically original artistic projects (Playtime, Heimat, Dogville, Russian ark). While being interested in noirs and comedies, I seldom like action, war, western, horror, science fiction or musical films.

Favourite cartoonists

• Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)
• René Goscinny (Asterix, Lucky Luke)
• "Quino" (Mafalda, ...)
• "Silver" (Lupo Alberto, Cattivik)