Julian Hanich
Associate Professor of Film Studies, Film Critic
Netherlands
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| 2001: A Space Odyssey | 1968 | Stanley Kubrick |
| Days of Heaven | 1978 | Terrence Malick |
| Once upon a Time in the West | 1968 | Sergio Leone |
| Mirror | 1975 | Andrei Tarkovsky |
| Berlin Symphony of a City | 1927 | Walther Ruttmann |
| The Assassin | 2015 | Hou Hsiao-Hsien |
| Meshes of the Afternoon | 1943 | Maya Deren, Alexander Hackenschmied |
| Heat | 1995 | Michael Mann |
| Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans | 1927 | F.W. Murnau |
| Blue | 1993 | Derek Jarman |
Comments
2001: A Space Odyssey
A giant monolith.
Days of Heaven
A gorgeous gem.
Once upon a Time in the West
A majestic spectacle.
Mirror
A perplexing contemplation.
Berlin Symphony of a City
A stunning kaleidoscope.
The Assassin
A beautiful enigma.
Meshes of the Afternoon
An uncanny puzzle.
Heat
A virile deliberation.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
A splendid fairy tale.
Blue
An elegiac experiment.
Further remarks
These ten films are the greatest to me personally, because they elicit the greatest desire to re-watch them. They are nothing less than a constant source of longing to re-experience the profound emotions and sensations they provide, to grapple with their hermeneutic depth, to admire their splendid formal beauty, to extend myself into their far-flung foreign worlds, or to discover new details every single time.
(Sadly, this implies that some of my favorite directors did not make it on the list: Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Pierre Melville, Max Ophüls, Lars von Trier, Yasujiro Ozu, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion, Michael Haneke, James Benning, Béla Tarr, Asghar Farhadi, Errol Morris, Alexander Sokurov and many others.)