Faouzi Bensaïdi

Director
Morocco

Voted for

FilmYearDirector
Citizen Kane1941Orson Welles
1963Federico Fellini
North by Northwest1959Alfred Hitchcock
Modern Times1936Charles Chaplin
Ran1985Akira Kurosawa
Playtime1967Jacques Tati
Raging Bull1980Martin Scorsese
The Godfather1972Francis Ford Coppola
Le Samouraï1967Jean-Pierre Melville
À bout de souffle1960Jean-Luc Godard

Comments

I wonder why, ten years later, my list is the same. And yet during that time I discovered the work of directors that I didn't know well – Pasolini for example, whose The Gospel According to St. Matthew I now love. There are also directors that I liked less before, but now, maybe because of age, life and its hardships, I have become a fan of their work. I have seen some films that will stay with me since 2012!

Why, from an initial longlist, are these the ten films that remain?

These are films that I saw between the ages of 14 and 25, which were, each in their own way, an aesthetic shock, a window opening, an answer to something at a precise moment in my life and in my quest to become a director. They are therefore the pillars of my temple of cinema. I can talk about each one at length, but the only reason that I chose them is that they helped me to live and become the director that I am.