I Ask People To Share A Movie That Defines Them (32 New Pics)

“Being a German born in 1988, a story like this touches me a lot. A beautiful story that helps to comprehend Germany today and explains a bit the feeling of the German people. I live far from Germany for a lot of years and when I speak about German cinema with people, this is a movie that everybody knows, so for me, it’s something familiar, with which I can identify myself”

“After the Second World War, this is one of the first movies that they let us watch in the parish of our town, Lecce nei Marsi, in Abruzzo. It’s a memory that brings me back to childhood because watching this movie we discovered what cinema was”

“I like the consideration about the role of the man and the woman and mostly the change of the male role around the '80s; I dislike it, even though people think it's a positive representation. It’s an interesting movie, every time I see it I can always find new details and I also like the book a lot”

“How beautiful was Paris at that time! It was the first movie that really touched me, it’s not only a romance but it’s also a story that leaves something inside you, I know the soundtrack by heart, 'El Tango de Roxanne' is my favorite scene. The first time I saw it I was at a friend’s house, me and my friend were around 12 and we chose a movie from her father’s collection. We chose this one because from the cover was clear that it was a romance, but maybe we were too young for this movie, so we felt a bit transgressive; at the end, we were crying”

“Among all the movies that I like, this is the one that made me understand that cinema can be not only something you can appreciate but it’s something to love. Three years ago I came to Rome to become a film director and if I hadn’t seen Pulp Fiction maybe I would never have got out from Brianza”

“The first time I saw it I was at home, on my couch, and while I was laughing I asked myself how could this movie know me so well: Alvy represents my male side and Annie, somehow, my female side. It was the first Woody Allen movie that I saw. Since then, he became my favorite director”

“I wanted to push the limits and also choose 'Jules et Jim' and 'The State of Things,' but I chose this one because when I was 18 it was crucial in that summer where I chose not to go to Villa Mirafiori to study Philosophy but to go to La Sapienza to study History of Cinema. These three movies, in particular, 'A Clockwork Orange,' were the triple jump that led me to La Sapienza, where I lived the happiest years of my life.”

“I like the message: there is this humble guy, who is taken for a ride by everyone, that can succeed. He taught me that nothing is impossible in life. When I was a child I could choose to see a movie every week, at 8 pm, and I always chose this. I used to watch it with my bigger brother and my parents”

“This movie gave the name to my alter ego, Sally Van Tassel: Sally is the doll in this movie, Van Tassel is Katrina in 'Sleepy Hollow,' even if I am more Sally than Katrina. The first time I saw it I was at home and I thought that Sally was one of the most extraordinary, deep and at the same time light female characters I’ve ever seen, and that her incapability of expressing herself was me; for this reason, now Sally, through me, expresses herself on the stage”

“It’s the first movie that gave me such strong openings on worlds parallel to the rationality. The protagonist personifies the figure of the director who would die for his psychosis. I am a director and I choose it also for that. The first time I saw it I was around 16 and I had decided to dismantle an attic that my parents used as a storage room, to create my little shelter. After clearing all the stuff, the first night, this was the first movie that I watched there”

“It’s the movie that made me understand how it's possible to communicate with images, colors, cinematography, soundtrack. On the other hand, I found emotional and sentimental affinities with the protagonist: in some situations that he lives, with some differences, I’ve seen myself, on some reflections, how the emotions resound in us, the relationship with others. These are all themes that I bring to my heart and I often come back to this movie”

“Free will is an important topic for me. How free are we to choose, really, even when we believe we have freedom of choice? How much was already written and how much can we choose? Just that, these are the themes that made me choose this movie: I’ve been always interested in reincarnation, about angels, so it’s not difficult to me to imagine an angel that falls and becomes human or an angel who cannot choose”

“It’s the movie that made me understand the relevance of the instant, but connected to the memory, I mean: how important is the perception of the instant that we live in but at the same time referred also to what we remember. 'Carpe diem' is my motto, but it’s actually dilated and connected to what you have been. The first time I saw it, I empathized with the protagonist, I forgot to follow the plot to focus on him, on his energies, and for me, it’s rare because I’ve studied screenwriting at the Academy of Bari and usually I’m focused on the plot of the movies. 'Perspective' is the keyword, because I began to analyze it from a new point of view”

“It’s the movie that made me fall in love with cinema. I saw it when I was around 13, in the open-air cinema of my city, Latina, and there were so many things in the film, the exuberance of the style and the direction, the use of music, the extraordinary performances: that impressed me a lot and since then it’s my favorite movie”

“It’s not easy to choose the film of a lifetime, it depends on which phase of life. Among the films that I love I’ve chosen this one that I saw when I was very young, for a very personal reason: I was the first in the world to write a monography about Robert Altman and I also had the chance to meet him”

“This movie represents my sentimental education: someone has Flaubert, someone Closer. In this film, you can find all you need to know about relationships, either good or bad way. After seeing the movie I read the play written by Marber. One of my dreams is to attend the play in a theatre”

“I love the encounter between these two women, this German woman who doesn’t speak English and this African American woman, it’s an incredible encounter. This movie changed my vision of the world, I mean, when I saw it I was very young and I immediately understood that, even if a person comes from another country, he has another color or speaks another language, it’s possible to understand each other and share something. It was my mother who showed me this movie and I don't know if she did it to teach me something, to show me the image of a strong woman, maybe yes. Since then I have greatly admired strong and independent women and I hope to have become one of them”

“I was particularly struck by how it expresses the concept of beauty: this film has a very refined aesthetic, beautiful sets, as well as costumes, and I like how Pasolini tells, through beauty, something extremely rotten, like the nature of human being that always wants to prevail over others. There's a thirst for power and prevarication in everyone, even in everyday life. I find it a unique film, I had never seen anything that went that far: it changed me, it forced me to do some considerations that haunted me for many days”

“In life, you have to decide whether to make people remember things or not… And that’s true, it really happens. It's a devastating sentimental story, with beautiful music. I really like the first line, when he says that he’s not afraid to die but he bothers to wake up early in the morning, so he wants to have this duel”

“I love road movies, I have written my thesis about it, then I like the script, the idea that traveling you can meet people with something in common with you, the idea of the unexpected meeting. I saw it for the first time by chance, then I’ve rewatched it many times and now I need to watch it every year”