Asif Kapadia’s 10 favourite movies of all time
Asif Kapadia might not be a household name, but he easily ranks among the most successful and prolific British filmmakers of the 21st century. A thoroughly versatile talent, Kapadia really has done it all: fiction, non-fiction, short films, and even television. The latter oeuvre includes two episodes of David Fincher’s acclaimed Mindhunter on Netflix back in 2017.
Kapadia, however, is arguably best known for his remarkable trilogy of documentaries released throughout the 2010s: Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona. With each film centred on a different iconic talent – Ayrton Senna, Amy Winehouse, and Diego Maradona, respectively – Kapadia tells their stories mostly through archival footage. All three are absolutely astonishing pieces of non-fiction storytelling, and in the 2015 project Amy, Kapadia won the Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary’.
Given how associated he is with documentary cinema, it was somewhat surprising to see that the top ten films Kapadia submitted to the most recent Sight & Sound poll didn’t feature any documentaries. Still, there was one particular selection that really echoed his work, and that was the 1962 French short La Jetée, directed by Chris Marker.
La Jetée ranks among cinema’s most unique masterpieces in that it is constructed almost entirely from still photographs edited together. There is no moving footage aside from a brief shot of a character opening her eyes. What this short has in common with Kapadia’s documentaries is its innovative visual presentation and its impressive use of editing to tell a story.
As such, it’s not surprising that, when discussing the film with Sight & Sound, Kapadia described the project as one of the films that inspires him the most. He commented: “If you can tell this complex, time-travelling love story with only stills, and in a short form, you can do anything if you have the imagination.”
He listed nine other films, including iconic classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather Part II, Once Upon a Time in the West, Raging Bull and Vertigo. When discussing Once Upon a Time in the West, Kapadia revealed that he made a pilgrimage to Monument Valley (located in Arizona) recently, mainly because this film (and various others) was shot there.
Within the list, Kapadia emphasises his love for filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Akira Kurosawa, as well as his fondness for the western genre. His list is filled with classics, but it does contain one 21st-century offering: Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love. When discussing this film, Kapadia explains that the “90s/2000s era of Asian/Chinese/Hong Kong cinema was for me the best cinema in the world” and also a major influence on him when he was finishing film school.
He ended the list by light-heartedly criticising his own top ten for its lack of international films. Regardless, his top ten is still a fascinating one, filled with incredible movies, and his passion for cinema shines through in every word.
Asif Kapadia’s 10 favourite films:
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
- Don’t Look Now (Nicholas Roeg, 1973)
- The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
- La Jetee (Chris Marker, 1962)
- Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
- Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
