“Absolutely blew me away”: You need to see these 5 films according to “Dune” director Denis Villeneuve

Science fiction fans have been marking their calendars for next Thursday: on February 29, “Dune: Part Two,” the long-awaited second part of Denis Villeneuve’s science fiction opus, will finally hit theaters. On this occasion , the favorite social network of many cinephiles, asked the celebrated director of cinema hits such as ‘Prisoners’, ‘Sicario’ and ‘Arrival’ about the 5 films that shaped and inspired him the most. Of course, we don’t want to withhold the list from you: These are Denis Villeneuve’s 5 favorite films!

1. “2001: A Space Odyssey”

Stanley Kubrick A groundbreaking genre classic should of course not be missing from the best list of a filmmaker who feels just as at home in the science fiction sector as Denis Villeneuve. The placement is therefore not a surprise: the Canadian has already emphasized in several interviews how important the 1968 film was for his cinematic socialization – at the Cannes Film Festival he said that the first encounter he had with the film in his youth a “cinematic shock” (through ). Also for us at FILMSTARTS, “2001: A Space Odyssey” is an almost perfect five-star masterpiece that has lost none of its fascination and explosive power even 60 years later.

2. “Apocalypse Now”

For Denis Villeneuve: “Apocalypse now‘The film I have probably seen the most times in my life. A film that I admire endlessly.” No wonder: Francis Ford Coppola’s psychedelic war film milestone (also 5 stars at FILMSTARTS!) is incomparable to anything else the genre has produced before or since – probably not despite, but precisely because of the legendary disastrous film adaptation (which is exactly what happened, you can read more about it in this article).

3. “Blade Runner”

The next 5-star science fiction classic on Villeneuve’s list: Today, it’s hard to imagine that “Blade Runner” was quite a flop at the time and wasn’t particularly well received by critics or audiences. Only in the following years did some filmmakers and science fiction fans gradually recognize the qualities of Ridley Scott’s futuristic film noir – including Christopher Nolan, who revealed in an interview with Denis Villeneuve that he had ‘Blade Runner’ on one of the discovered pirated videos. cassette. The creator of “Dune” also saw the film for the first time on VHS, where it was immediately burned into his memory.

4. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

If you like science fiction, you can’t ignore Steven Spielberg. If Villeneuve had to pick a genre entry from the creator of “ET,” his choice would be “Encounters of the third kind(1977) fall, in which Spielberg sent (friendly) aliens to Earth for the first time. With this film, the young director continued his success after ‘Jaws’ – and created cinema images for eternity in the symphonic final act, in which the spaceship lands on Earth.

5. “Person”

It’s true bee “persona‘ is also a canonized classic, but in Villeneuve’s list it stands out as a Swedish black-and-white psychodrama among all the American science fiction films. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece is about the nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson), who cares for the isolated, mute actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann). Little by little, the two women’s personalities begin to merge. “Persona” “absolutely blew him away,” Villeneuve said. Traces of the film can most likely be found in his enigmatic psychological thriller ‘Enemy’ with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Hand on heart: The filmmaker’s list undoubtedly consists of great films – but those hoping for a surprise will look in vain. Perhaps Villeneuve should take the following article by FILMSTARTS editor Stefan Geisler to heart and follow up with another list that also contains unexpected things or insider tips (after all, the Canadian notes at the beginning of the short video that his selection can change daily):