Greta Gerwig names her three favourite filmmmakers
Throughout her career, Greta Gerwig has carved out a special niche for herself, blending independent movies with unique messages while also amassing a broad audience. She possesses a talent for weaving critical narratives into movies that still draw a mass crowd, and her achievements within the film industry have earned rightful acclaim.
Her directorial debut, Lady Bird, showcased Gerwig as an excellent director and writer capable of exploring the nature of adolescence, and the Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ were more than understandable, and Gerwig managed to transpose this brilliance into her Barbie movie, one of the most talked about works of 2023.
When it comes to Gerwig’s influences, they seem to spread far and wide, and in an interview with Crash, she named artists and writers as varied as “Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Herman Melville, and the Russians.” William Shakespeare gets a mention, as do Tom Stoppard and Will Eno. Quite simply, Gerwig’s is incredibly well-read and pulls inspiration from all four corners of the creative world.
“I’ve really gotten much more interested in female writers and artists, playwrights, and filmmakers,” the director added, “but I really didn’t have a sense of who my women heroes were, and I think now I have had the privilege to work with some of these people.” Gerwig then went on to name her three favourite directors.
“Claire Denis and Agnès Varda, and now Mia Hansen-Løve, she’s amazing,” the filmmaker said. Beginning with Claire Denis, the French filmmaker known for Beau Travail and High Life, is considered a true master of storytelling, while her visual prowess is one of the most distinctive in European cinema, making it easy to understand Gerwig’s admiration.
Another French filmmaker whom Gerwig has great respect for is one of its pioneers, Agnes Varda, who has forever etched her name into the statue of French cinema’s history. With critically acclaimed masterpieces like Cleo from 5 to 7 and Faces Places, Varda’s movies embody a sense of realism that Gerwig has clearly been inspired by, while her unique poeticism also provides a welcome sense of quality.
Finally, Gerwig rounds off her love for the great directors of France with Mia Hansen-Løve, another filmmaker who uses emotive depth as a central part of her works. Admired across the world for Things to Come and Eden, Hansen-Løve, like Gerwig, Denis and Varda, explores the complex nature of human relationships with a sensitivity that has captured the hearts of several of her fellow directors.
