Karyn Kusama, like so many first-time directors, remembers making her directorial debut with "very little money and very little time." That movie, the boxing drama Girlfight, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000, where it won a Grand Jury Prize and Kusama took home a Directing Award.
"In a funny way, that kind of inexperience actually really served me, and I'm always trying to get back now to a place of blissful not knowing," Kusama reflects. "I don't want to quite call it ignorance — because that's not really what I mean — but a lack of over-awareness about the obstacles in front of me. That's what fueled the process while I was making Girlfight. I wasn't really concentrating on how hard it was, I was just loving doing it."
Girlfight became a landmark of indie cinema, launching a then-unknown Michelle Rodriguez to movie stardom and announcing Kusama as a filmmaker to watch. In the years since, she's helmed such varied offerings as the sci-fi actioner Æon Flux (2004), feminist horror flick Jennifer's Body (2009), neo-noir crime drama Destroyer (2015); however, no matter the genre, what drives her is still the same as it was on Girlfight.
"It represents so much of what I'm still interested in about character and about movies," explains the director. "I love character studies. I love getting to watch a person evolve. In some respects, I feel like it was a very truthful representation of my interests at the time, but also my enduring interests."
Below, Kusama shares with A.frame her five favorite films, an exercise she calls "freaking painful." "I hope every single person says to you, 'This is an impossible task,'" she adds with a laugh. "It changes minute-to-minute!" And so, here are her five favorite films at this moment.
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer | Written by: Jonathan Glazer and Walter Campbell
This is a perfect, sublime expression of pure cinema. I recently saw the film again on the big screen and was bowled over by its physical beauty. Shot to shot, I just gasped at how beautiful it was. And yet, the story it's telling is ultimately so tragic and harrowing. There was something about watching a character who doesn't care about other human beings — and then it changes. That brought up so many emotions for me, and I cared so much for that character by the end, which is a miracle. I think it's a masterpiece.
Directed by: Alan J. Pakula | Written by: William Goldman
I recently had the pleasure of watching All the President's Men on the big screen for probably the 10th time. To me, that is such an incredible example of a mainstream movie that won Academy Awards and remains relevant today. It also remains visually and formally so exciting, so groundbreaking, and so new.
Directed by: Jacque Audiard | Written by: Jacque Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri and Nicolas Peufaillit
I return to A Prophet for what it says about character and location. That movie really speaks to a deep understanding of character, with a sense of fantasy even within its grim circumstances and a sense of magic that makes this epic tale of a young prisoner making his way through these prison cliques that much more heart-wrenching and effective. Tahar Rahim is so good, and when you watch the film again, it's like you really see him grow from a boy to a man. You see the young, scared teenager who's first entering that prison system become the grown, now very shrewd criminal who leaves, which I think is an incredible story to tell.
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino | Written by: Barbara Alberti, Ivan Cotroneo, Walter Fasano and Luca Guadagnino
I love I Am Love for its attention to surfaces, and to pleasure and to sensuality. And then to see, ultimately, that Luca Guadagnino is working in this grand tradition of female melodrama. I still look at that movie with a tremendous sense of awe and inspiration.
Written and Directed by: Alice Rohrwacher
La chimera spoke to me so deeply about how the past follows us into the present and determines our future, and the idea of wanting to connect to something from long ago —something we've lost. Alice Rohrwacher took all of those themes and pulled it together against the backdrop of modernization and industrialization. It blew me away. And I can’t stop thinking about it.
