Yorgos Lanthimos picks five movies everybody should see
Since first capturing mainstream attention and imagination with his breakout 2009 feature Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos has become one of the most interesting, exciting, and singular filmmakers working today.
Currently on an incredible run of form that’s seen him deliver The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite, and Poor Things as his last four movies in the space of seven years, Lanthimos’ distinctive style and absurdist leanings have marked him out as a director that’s always willing and able to push the boundaries of mainstream cinema.
Even creative minds with such an unmistakable sense of style and tone need to draw their inspirations from somewhere, though, with Lanthimos naming five must-see films to Le Cinéma Club that help shed light on how he cultivated and curated his own sense of cinematic self.
Describing The Shepherds of Calamity as “definitely one of the greatest Greek films ever made”, it’s easy to see why Lanthimos was so affected by the story of a local woman trying to marry her daughter to the son of a wealthy landowner when he praises it as “something so modern, absurd, anarchistic set in a bucolic environment and made in Greece during the ’60s”.
Acclaimed Thai drama Syndromes and a Century finds director Apichatpong Weerasethakul coming in for praise, with Lanthimos saying that “this man is doing something different with cinema today”. Telling two stories with different settings and outcomes despite shared dialogue and characters, the three-time Academy Award nominee calls it “so delicate and so powerful at the same time”.
A self-professed John Cassavetes fan who admits that “this list could just be five of his films”, Lanthimos plumps for midlife crisis comedy-drama Husbands, which traces three men dealing with losing their close friend. In awe of its director, Lanthimos remarks: “I just don’t know how he did it, and have never seen anything like it since”.
Miklós Jancsó’s The Round-Up finds Lanthimos torn between two of the director’s works, leaving him conflicted: “I’m always trying to decide whether I like this or The Red and The White better. I still haven’t.” In the end, he plumped for the period piece set in 1860s Hungary that sees the government tracking down any remaining rebels two decades after a failed revolution.
A psychological horror with heavy dramatic undercurrents sounds right up Lanthimos’ cinematic street, but Possession isn’t the only one of Andrzej Zulawski’s films that he adores: “I like many of his movies. They’re so over the top, hysterical, dramatic, funny, romantic, one of a kind,” even if Possession wins out on account of the “spectacular” Isabelle Adjani.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ movie recommendations:
- The Shepherds of Calamity (Nico Papatakis, 1967)
- Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
- Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970)
- The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó, 1966)
- Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)
