Brazilian filmmaker and former film critic; directed Neighboring Sounds (2012), Aquarius (2016), Bacurau (2019) and The Secret Agent (2025), which won him Best Director at Cannes.
Bigger Than Life is a modern take on U.S. society in the 1950s that was unusual at a time when Hollywood and television were invested in depicting picture-perfect nuclear families. The film is both disturbing and fascinating.
Criterion Collection Top 10 list by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the entry for Bigger Than Life.
U.S. cinema has made the action film a national product, but all in all I keep thinking of two films that have rewritten filmed and staged action: George Miller’s Mad Max 2, from Australia, and Woo’s Hard Boiled, from Hong Kong.
Criterion Collection Top 10 list by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the entry for Hard Boiled.
When I was preparing my film Aquarius, I looked at a number of films I admire. Two of them were from South Korea, Bong Joon-ho’s Mother and Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine.
Criterion Collection Top 10 list by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the entry for Secret Sunshine.
Heaven’s Gate was so brutalized at the time of its release, but all things considered one feels most of the assessments now are actually positive. I think time has been kind to it; it’s an American epic that feels closer to a Soviet experiment than to straight-up Hollywood.
Criterion Collection Top 10 list by Kleber Mendonça Filho, the entry for Heaven’s Gate.
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