Guests picking guests
Nobody has picked back
93 of the 423 people who have stood in this closet also directed one of the films in it, so a guest can reach for another guest's work without either of them being in the room together. 528 pairs of people have done it, across 252 of the 403 visits. Not one of those pairs runs both ways.
Reaching in both directions
An arc is one visit reaching one other guest's work, stretched between the day it happened and the day that guest came to the closet themselves. Which side of the line it falls on says whether the series was citing its own past or running ahead of it.
529 citations · 472 of them chosen as a single film, the rest arriving inside a box set
One arc is one visit reaching one other guest's work. It runs from the day that visit was filmed to the day the guest whose film it was first came to the closet themselves, so its width is the gap between the two. Above the line, they had already been. Below it, they had not arrived yet. The dots on the line are the twelve most-reached guests, on their own visit dates.
Reached for most
Ranked by visits that reached them, not by films: taking the Agnès Varda box set is one decision about Varda, and it arrives with twenty-two of her films. The gap between the two columns is the whole reason this site counts choices and reach apart.
Guest-directors reached by at least 3 visits
| Guest | Visits that reached them | Chose a film outright | Films reached | In collection | Their own visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jim Jarmusch | 30 | 30 | 6 | 6 | 16 Jan 2026 |
| Mike Leigh | 27 | 27 | 5 | 5 | 16 Dec 2014 |
| Agnès Varda | 24 | 1 | 22 | 22 | 17 Jun 2015 |
| Wim Wenders | 24 | 21 | 10 | 12 | 7 Dec 2023 |
| David Cronenberg | 22 | 22 | 5 | 8 | 17 Apr 2025 |
| JR | 20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 27 Feb 2024 |
| Alfonso Cuarón | 19 | 19 | 3 | 3 | 4 Oct 2013 |
| Terry Gilliam | 18 | 18 | 5 | 6 | 27 Jan 2018 |
| John Waters | 15 | 15 | 4 | 6 | 26 Jul 2017 |
| Claire Denis | 13 | 13 | 2 | 3 | 2 Oct 2017 |
| Charles Burnett | 12 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 18 Apr 2025 |
| Bong Joon Ho | 10 | 10 | 3 | 3 | 27 Jun 2014 |
| Carl Franklin | 10 | 10 | 2 | 2 | 23 Apr 2023 |
| Gina Prince-Bythewood | 10 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 12 Sept 2022 |
| Guillermo del Toro | 9 | 9 | 5 | 7 | 22 Sept 2010 |
| Andrew Stanton | 9 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 26 Nov 2024 |
| Danny Boyle | 8 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 2 Jun 2025 |
| John Sayles | 8 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 24 Mar 2018 |
| John Cameron Mitchell | 8 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 26 Mar 2026 |
| Todd Haynes | 7 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 20 Oct 2023 |
| Catherine Breillat | 7 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 11 Oct 2023 |
| Joachim Trier | 7 | 7 | 1 | 2 | 31 Mar 2016 |
| Amy Heckerling | 6 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 5 May 2016 |
| Benny Safdie | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 30 Mar 2017 |
| David Byrne | 6 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 16 Jun 2025 |
| Josh Safdie | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 30 Mar 2017 |
| Gregg Araki | 5 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 6 Apr 2023 |
| Jean-Pierre Dardenne | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 Mar 2023 |
| Luc Dardenne | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 2 Mar 2023 |
| Guy Maddin | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 18 Apr 2011 |
| Volker Schlöndorff | 5 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 17 Oct 2014 |
| Lena Dunham | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 8 May 2025 |
| Lucrecia Martel | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 17 Sept 2017 |
| Paweł Pawlikowski | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 4 Oct 2013 |
| Theodore Witcher | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 23 Nov 2021 |
| Sean Baker | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 31 Jul 2015 |
| Andrew Haigh | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 1 Aug 2015 |
| Barry Jenkins | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 24 Sept 2016 |
| Alexander Payne | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 16 Apr 2017 |
| André Bonzel | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 Oct 2011 |
| Francis Ford Coppola | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 19 Dec 2024 |
| Garrett Bradley | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 7 Oct 2021 |
| James L. Brooks | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 6 Dec 2017 |
| Justine Triet | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 10 Oct 2023 |
| Sofia Coppola | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 Mar 2026 |
| Cristian Mungiu | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 26 Aug 2016 |
| Cheryl Dunye | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 17 Mar 2024 |
| Gints Zilbalodis | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 17 Oct 2024 |
| Jerzy Skolimowski | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 14 Jun 2023 |
| Lila Avilés | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 13 Nov 2023 |
A citation is one visit reaching one other guest's work, box sets opened, however many of their films arrived with it. A guest reaching for their own film is counted separately and is not a citation, and neither is a film directed by anyone else who was in the room that day.
Reached for before they arrived
These guests were being picked off the shelf by other people long before Criterion filmed them. It is the closest this data comes to measuring standing: not how many people picked you, but how many did it while you were still only a name on a spine.
150 of 529 citations ran ahead of their subject's own visit
| Guest | Reached before their visit | Reached in total | Their own visit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jim Jarmusch | 27 | 30 | 16 Jan 2026 |
| David Cronenberg | 14 | 22 | 17 Apr 2025 |
| Charles Burnett | 8 | 12 | 18 Apr 2025 |
| John Cameron Mitchell | 8 | 8 | 26 Mar 2026 |
| JR | 8 | 20 | 27 Feb 2024 |
| Wim Wenders | 7 | 24 | 7 Dec 2023 |
Both columns count visits, so they can be read against each other. A visit that reached three of a guest's films before that guest arrived is one visit in the left column, not three.
Taking their own film off the shelf
Thirteen visits reached a film the guest made themselves. It is not a citation and it is not counted as one, but it is the shortest possible edge in this graph.
12 chosen outright · 1 arrived inside a box set
| Guest | Their film | Filmed | How it came off the shelf |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volker Schlöndorff | Coup de grâce | 17 Oct 2014 | chosen on its own |
| Andrew Haigh | Weekend | 1 Aug 2015 | chosen on its own |
| Euzhan Palcy | A Dry White Season | 5 Nov 2017 | chosen on its own |
| Gina Prince-Bythewood | Love & Basketball | 12 Sept 2022 | chosen on its own |
| Wim Wenders | Until the End of the World | 7 Dec 2023 | chosen on its own |
| JR | Faces Places | 27 Feb 2024 | inside a box set |
| Cheryl Dunye | The Watermelon Woman | 17 Mar 2024 | chosen on its own |
| Mike Leigh | Secrets & Lies | 7 Oct 2024 | chosen on its own |
| Francis Ford Coppola | Rumble Fish | 19 Dec 2024 | chosen on its own |
| Charles Burnett | Killer of Sheep | 18 Apr 2025 | chosen on its own |
| David Byrne | True Stories | 16 Jun 2025 | chosen on its own |
| Sofia Coppola | The Virgin Suicides | 3 Mar 2026 | chosen on its own |
| John Cameron Mitchell | Hedwig and the Angry Inch | 26 Mar 2026 | chosen on its own |
What the zero is and is not
It is a real property of this data and a small number of ways it could be wrong are worth stating plainly.
A guest reaching for their own film is not counted as reaching for someone else's, and neither is a film directed by anybody else who was in the room that day: two guests filmed together pick from one list, so a film by one of them is that pair's own film. Both exclusions make the zero easier to hold, and both are the right call for reasons that have nothing to do with it.
The reach counted here opens box sets, so a film arriving inside a set about somebody else still counts. That makes reciprocity easier to find, not harder, and it was still not found. Restricting to films chosen outright leaves 472 citations and the same answer.
Directors come from Criterion's own credit on each film, so a guest who produced, wrote or starred in another guest's film is invisible here. A fuller version of this graph needs cast and crew, which this project does not carry, and it would very likely find the zero does not survive. So the claim is the narrow one: nobody has reached for the work of a guest who directed something they reached for. It is not a claim that these people are unconnected.