I Believe That The Film We Are Most Attached To Can Tell A Lot About A Person So I Asked People To Define Themselves Through A Movie (30 Pics)

“Did I choose it because I’m romantic? No! There are two reasons: one is Inigo Montoya (and the characters in general) and then the cloak and dagger genre and these painted backgrounds that reflect its tradition. The characters are fantastic, somehow they are all heroes.”

“It’s the symbol of our generation, it taught us to dream about impossible things. We are the choices we choose.”

“It’s the film that physically excites me the most, I mean, I press play, I hear two notes and I can’t hold back the tears, I am a river, really. In addition to this very strong physical motivation, there’s also the way how the theme of diversity is told, it’s wonderful, it’s like a fairy tale. And then him, Danny Elfman: the soundtrack is fundamental for this film.”

“I think it’s an unparalleled creative combination of three talents and their genius: Ridley Scott, Philip Dick, and Vangelis. It’s the perfect synthesis between literary and cinematographic work, it’s poetry, it lacks nothing and in Roy Batty’s final monologue there is everything. As a photography lover, I think it’s the film with the best cinematography ever and this makes the difference. I saw it recently, it gave me gooseflesh.”

“Working with Music is a useless profession, I don’t cure anyone, I don’t build bridges or roads. This film reconciles with my primordial world, thanks to its oneiric, creative and hardly simple material. Beethoven is complex, as well as Stravinskij, but we often forget how simple they can be if seen with the creative potential of a child. Thanks to this film, I’m a child and an adult at the same time, since ever, and when I watch it I remember why I choose to do this job.”

“I saw it when I was 5 and since then, nothing has been the same. I saw it every day when I came back from school and it infused me with all the love I have for cinema. I think it’s the first movie I’ve seen in my life, I was shocked, every day I would come home from school and I would see it again and again, I must have seen it for a year in a row!”

"It’s a film that always makes me cry, it has a wonderful narrative. Many years ago, I wasn’t a Capra fan, then I was sent to the USA because I was commissioned to write a book about him and I fell in love with Frank Capra. At that time, I thought he was a sort of paternalistic fascist, but he’s a director who talks about America’s contradictions. During this movie, the scene that makes me cry is when after the nightmare about never having been born, he returns to the real world. It seems like a Christian fairy tale for children but it’s a film about America.”

"In our family, this film is some kind of a ritual. It's one of those films that we have to see on TV when it's on, no matter what. It's part of my childhood and it's definitely the main reason for my choice. Together with my brother, we always repeat the line: "What? What? Oh, Rool, you and your stupid rat dreams."

“It emotes me every time I see it.”

“It’s the first film I remember seeing as a child and it’s the first movie that I learned by heart. At every carnival, I wanted to dress like them and then the Ghostbusters are the Ghostbusters, period!”

“I think I saw it a million times. I like the characters from Morpheus to Cypher but above all, the philosophical references from the Oracle to Ancient Greece.”

"This movie is a part of my childhood. That scene where everyone gets on the desk, well, I always wanted to do it too. Every time I watched it, I was waiting for that moment, he has incredible power. Then it’s the kind of rhetoric that was useful to me in my teenage years!"

“This film is the first memory I have of my life. It was New Year’s Eve, I was about 3 years old and I remember the big worm that came out to eat the Falcon, that scene really impressed me. In my eyes, this movie is a perfect summary of everyone’s life: we joke, we laugh, there is love, there is suffering, family dramas, problems with teachers. I love Star Wars!”

“I've seen it 600 times! It’s the kind of humor that I like. I enjoy studying it and, when it’s possible, use it in my daily life, even if it’s not that easy. I remember that Leslie Nielsen died the same day as Mario Monicelli and I quarreled with a person who said that I shouldn’t talk about Nielsen just because Monicelli was more important: “What’s the point?” I told him and we began to argue. But today, that's something I wouldn’t do again.”

“When I was a teenager, I watched this movie many times. I learned the songs and I never stopped singing them. I used to love singing, and I also loved this tormented and passionate story.”

“The story, with its epicness, is truly incredible, it’s a sort of modern version of Moby Dick.”

“I think it’s the greatest film ever made. I connect it to my mother, she made me see it, it was one of her favorite films: when I was 10, I used to play the piano, as a conclusion of the recital I had to play the Blue Danube and I couldn’t do it right. So she let me see how I had to play it showing me 2001 and there I said: “The piano is ok but… the Cinema!!”

“My father has an endless collection of films on videotape. I remember first seeing this film with him at 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t understand much but it was my first contact with Cinema, with scenarios and photography. It’s a very colorful movie and it fascinated me for this reason, it opened the door to me and I thought: “So this is Cinema!”

“In my life, I’ve always tried to put together all my passions, that are a lot and the circus and medicine are among these. Sometimes my life looks like this movie, when I tell my experience about the circus, people often believe it and don’t believe it, these stories are so unusual (like a World Record and a Guinness Record in the Yucatan) that immediately create the “Big Fish” effect, it’s like a syndrome. Some years ago, when I was a warehouse worker, I did a commercial for Discovery Channel as a juggler: at work, my boss asked if that juggler was really me. I told him: “If I could do these things, you think that I’d work in a warehouse?” I didn’t tell the truth because if you reveal yourself, you change the balance. Even now, I work in a hospital, when I arrived, they had already seen me on TV, everybody recognizes me for the Mirror Show that has been on television in Italy and around the world: unfortunately you become immediately popular and it’s wrong because I could be the greatest impostor in the world and people talk only about a single episode of my life, not about my studies or what university I attended. At the end, you become a prisoner of your stories.”

“I’ve always liked it, always. It has various themes that strike me, as the fatality of life: in the end, even if you want to forget a person, it’s impossible, you can’t. The most beautiful thing is when he thinks he has lost her forever, she says: “Meet me in Montauk”. It’s thrilling.”

“It’s a film that represents me a lot since I was a child due to the importance I give to friendship, justice, the way to compare each other, trying to make the best of life. I remember seeing it one Sunday at the old Cinema America in Rome, my father was working, so I watched it with my mother and my grandmother; it’s funny to think that my grandmother saw a movie like that!”

“This movie brings me to my childhood, the years when John Landis did amazing movies, every year at Christmas I turn off my phone and I rewatch “Trading Places”, that is another movie that I love, so I chose this one mostly for reasons that make me think about my childhood: my friends and I know it by heart and we often quote the lines of this movie.”

“The first time I saw it, I was in Praia, where I used to go on holiday with my parents. It was the summer of 1999, I was 15 and the movie was only for over 16's but I managed to get in with an older friend, lying about my age. It’s the movie that changed my life after seeing it. When I came back home, I told my mother that I wanted to be a director. Then my life evolved in a different way and I became a director of photography, but this was the movie that made me decide to pursue my career in cinema."

“It’s a film about limits, about surviving. I saw it with my dad when I was a child and I love it.”

“It's my 140 minutes of good humor. I mean, if I feel down I watch Irma and then I feel better. I have a total passion for Jack Lemmon and I like that there is female friendship, then the love story: it’s a fantastic movie.”

“I saw it with a friend who loves Tarantino very much but she didn’t like the film. I remember that while everyone around me was watching the scenes of violence, I cried a lot. I was very struck by the story of how this man allied with the bounty hunter: the theme of slavery, told in this key, made me think of our world today, I imagined all the suffering, the inhumanity that existed and that still exists. And then that final revenge, typical of Tarantino, really filled me with energy, it was liberating.”

“Humans for many years tried to look outside the Earth to find answers about Cosmos or the infinite, but they didn’t solve their own problems, they didn’t look inside themselves: but looking inside themselves, is it useful? It’s easy? Or does it only bring new questions? I chose this film because it questions us and it does it on another planet. My high school philosophy teacher showed me this film, it thrilled me because it wasn’t the usual sci-fi movie that we Westerners are used to, it didn’t have the usual plot where someone has to save someone else or where they have to save the Earth, but it’s focused on characters and their problems. This film is certainly the origin of my passion for Russian Cinema.”

“I’ve always been obsessed with space, my father liked “2001”, he always talked about it and when I was a kid, I finally saw it on TV: obviously I didn’t understand everything but, I mean, you’re in space! Then every time I saw it again, I discovered new things, it’s the definitive cosmic film, there’s everything, there’s all the cinema, there’s video art, there’s music.”

“It is the first film I fell in love with and that made me think, “Oh my god, are you really describing our inner life so well? Our inner crisis?”

"As far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."

“I really like the ending that can be read in different ways. In this film, there is always something to discover, scene by scene.”

“How can you explain such a deep love? It’s one of those movies that represent everything I believe in, what I think cinema should be: spectacular, surprising, intimate, deep.”

“It’s the first movie that I remember, the first movie that I remember seeing as a movie: I was with my gramma, it was summer.”

“Usually I watch it alone, for me, it’s a catharsis, it depresses me and then raises me again. It’s a mix of emotions that we all experience: the director has put all our weaknesses on this film and, as a photographer, I realize how this movie also influenced the style of the images I capture on the street.”

“It made me discover a different way of looking at cinema, more in-depth, it allowed me to stimulate my mind about the details of the movie. It’s one of the films I saw more times and I live it in a different way at each rewatch, but at the same time always with the same sense of sadness. It’s a film that strongly stimulates visual perceptions, photography is extraordinary, and I really like it's being continually poised between dream and reality, between the reality and the unattainable. I feel very close to the pain, to the lack of communication, to this distance between the two protagonists: “Not seeming, but being.”

“As soon as I saw it, I fell madly in love with it. There are 400 hours of footage. With this film, Miller has shown what it means to love his own work: it’s two hours of pure delirium.”

“Beyond the beautiful love story, where love remains even if life can move two people away, I love the protagonist: a woman who never gives up on herself.”

“I love Blues, old cars, the Fifties, the taste of bourbon that I feel everytime I see this movie.”

“I remember I saw it when I was a teenager on a tape where the 16:9 bends were blue and not black. Last time I saw it was in a cinema a few years ago. I was with a girl that I would never see again.”

“My high school literature teacher showed me this film: after talking with him about Herzog, I started thinking about studying cinema because before I wanted to study biology.”

"I love Nicolas Cage in this movie. I actually spent a whole night hanging out with him when I was working as a chief in the St. Regis Grand Hotel. I chose this movie because I lived a strange life due to money and vices but finally I rescued myself from it."

“I really like cinematography, colors, the concept: the poetry behind this movie always touched me. I always think about the images of nature, the feeling of loyalty, the ability to meditate on and therefore also to be able to change my mind.”

“I’ve always loved gangster movies with Robert De Niro or Al Pacino. This movie has incredible poetry, it’s about friendship and human weaknesses. The first time I saw it, I was alone and wanted to relax while watching a movie. I had it because my brother bought the DVD for me. The music is great, I love the scenes when they are children.”

“I’m completely in love with this movie. Antoine Doinel is, in some way, my cinematographic alter ego, there’s a sort of spiritual affinity between us. I saw this movie at university in a life period when, like Antoine, I was looking for my place in the world: I perennially felt troubled, sometimes unappreciated, I was a little like him, a romantic dreamer. Antoine Doinel is still the father of a generation that will never stop existing: this movie makes me feel at home, it represents something that is still pulsating inside me because after all, everybody needs a long escape to the sea, a scene that melts me every time I see it. And then there is Paris, a city that means a lot to me, I’ve been there many times and every time I go there, I go to Montmartre to thank Truffaut for this movie.”

“The first time I saw it, I was in a room I rented on the very grey Tiburtina area in Rome, hoping and wanting to become an actress: it opened a new world for me. I especially liked the character of Gelsomina. She is a female character different from the usual and I see myself in her. There is this thing about being a clown - she brings with her the joy of living and the bitterness of life. I also did some paintings inspired by this film.”

“In my opinion, it’s a high-concept film, high as concepts and feelings dear to me. It puts you in front of your world and the world in general. When I was younger, I could not identify myself with any of the protagonists because I saw something of me in every one of them and today, this still happens to me.”

“I always liked it, I like it very much: I think it’s very well written and it’s the representation of the history of Italy, it’s a fresco, a fantastic tableaux vivant.”

“It’s a beautiful story, it teaches that doing good to others is also good for ourselves.”

“It’s the first movie I saw with my girlfriend. The film itself isn’t important, I don’t particularly like it, but it has sentimental value: it’s our first film.”

“It doesn’t seem the time suggested by a normal film, it seems that it reflects the flow of real life. Somehow it’s a film without a plot, its main content is the way it wants to show you the passing of time. It’s a film that takes away from me the anxiety of looking for a sense, giving instead sense to the way you live the time itself. I saw it again because I felt the need to perceive time in that way to calm myself in a certain moment of my life: I need to rewatch this movie just to feel again how it shows you the time.”

“I split my life in before and after Mistress America. There was a kind of epiphany, I feel particularly emotionally involved with this film, even from the point of view of the theme I can’t find any film that can better tell the precariousness, both sentimental and working, of my generation. When in the movie she says that she was the last cowboy, all romance and failure, I can see a little myself, then a film that ends in this way… I saw it for the first time at Rome Film Festival, at the end of the day, when we were all a bit tired, but it really was one of the most beautiful screenings of my life.”

“There are dialogues that I carry with me, always. This is what I like in the movies. There is that moment when the taxi driver tells his dream of the limousine and instead the guy behind in few words tells him: what are you still doing in a taxi? In the end, you will be like everyone else. You will be an old man laying on a sofa and telling yourself that you tried.”

“It’s a film that embraces all the various faces of love from friendship to betrayal. There is a line that is really beautiful: “We thought we could change the world but it’s the world that changed us”. I love the character of Manfredi, he didn’t bow, he was always himself and remained pure.”

"I first saw it when I was 17 and I identified with the boy although I didn't have most of his problems. This movie represents the cinema that I really like, the American '80s, which we grew up with. I'm very attached to it."

"It's a Renoir movie about a homeless man who throws himself into the Seine and a generous family saves him. They bring him into their house and he changes everything by bringing happiness into their lives. He's one of those characters that I always wanted to meet in real life. Other movies have made me love cinema but this one definitely made me love life itself."

“The story is exciting as well as all the events that happen to the protagonist. He makes two trips: the inner one and on the road. Kirsten Dunst represents the idea of women in Crowe’s films, which I am fond of.”

“I like Charlie Hunnam, the main actor, he’s fantastic. This movie has crazy dynamism, it’s very ironic. I have always seen King Arthur in a very classical way and in this movie, he’s different. There is this sword that makes me think that in my previous lives, I must have been a knight: I chose this film because I like the battle, the good that emerges over evil, I am a woman who fights and if we were in the Middle Ages, I would certainly be a warrior woman!”

“It’s a film where reality repeats itself in a sort of spiral. I think that life events repeat themselves until we find another way to live or overcome them. I find it very realistic how all of this is represented in this movie. I notice this repetition in my relationships as well and I thought about how stupid we are: the same situations are presented repeatedly right in front of our eyes and it’s like we have new ones and don't notice the similarities.”

“When I first saw it, I was very young, about 16 or 17. In the next ten years, I discovered that I had basically imitated the main character of the film, especially the ways he sees himself. He gets himself into certain kinds of situations, with his crazy friends. He doesn’t want to grow up, and tries to fight no matter what, because he’s a romantic hero.”

“It’s the film of my life, without a doubt. For me, it was an epiphany, it’s one of those films that transforms you after the first view and it’s a different film every time I see it. The beauty of the ending always leaves me breathless. Robert Altman is one of the reasons why I love cinema, once in Venice, I also had the opportunity to talk about the film with his wife.”