6 Jan 2026

Jodie Foster’s Closet Picks

The actor and director shares her love for the films of Céline Sciamma, talks about the Olympic Games documentary Visions of Eight, and reminisces about watching Berlin Alexanderplatz with her mom.

Jodie Foster: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

13

10 single, 3 box sets

single films

10

chosen on their own

box sets

3

one choice, many films

films reached

32

the same visit, box sets opened

Criterion's own upload · on criterion.com

This visit as a strip, a cell for each choice: paler the older the film, indigo for a box set, which is one cell however many films it holds. The order is the order Criterion's own page lists them in, which is probably but not provably the order they came off the shelf.

1034 Portrait of a Lady on Fire 2019 1181 Petite maman 2021 1110 The Piano 1993 1081 Visions of Eight 1973 SET Three Films by Mai Zetterling 1054 Parasite 2019 381 La haine 1995 219 La strada 1954 SET Essential Fellini 394 Woman in the Dunes 1964 490 Wings of Desire 1987 411 Berlin Alexanderplatz 1980 SET John Cassavetes: Five Films

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Portrait of a Lady on Fire	Céline Sciamma	2019	3
2	Petite maman	Céline Sciamma	2021	5
3	The Piano	Jane Campion	1993	5
4	Visions of Eight	Juri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, Kon Ichikawa, Miloš Forman, Claude Lelouch, John Schlesinger	1973	1
5	Three Films by Mai Zetterling box set, 3 films			2
6	Parasite	Bong Joon Ho	2019	6
7	La haine	Mathieu Kassovitz	1995	5
8	La strada	Federico Fellini	1954	16
9	Essential Fellini box set, 14 films			16
10	Woman in the Dunes	Hiroshi Teshigahara	1964	6
11	Wings of Desire	Wim Wenders	1987	4
12	Berlin Alexanderplatz	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	1980	6
13	John Cassavetes: Five Films box set, 6 films			30

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1954 to 2021, box sets 1950 to 2000

John Cassavetes: Five Films

Essential Fellini

Three Films by Mai Zetterling

a single film, at its year a box set, across the years of its films the collection, by decade

The axis is the same 1920 to 2030 on every visit page, so a haul that stayed inside one decade looks like one. A box set is drawn across the years of the films inside it, which is a range of release dates and not a claim about the set. Nothing here is in the order the choices were made: displayed position moves film year by a fifth of one percent of its variance, which is not a slope worth drawing.

How long this haul is

31 of its 32 films carry a runtime, and those alone run at least 63.2 hours. One of the others is a television series, which has no total on record at all: TMDB gives one episode's length, not a series'. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

What one of its choices was worth is not published for this visit. That figure divides the whole runtime by every choice, so a total missing one film would understate it rather than be approximately right.

How unusual this haul was

Its 13 choices had been taken by 8.08 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. One of them has been taken by nobody else. The least-picked was Visions of Eight, taken by this visit alone.

This visit reached the work of Bong Joon Ho, through Parasite, Claude Lelouch, through Visions of Eight and Wim Wenders, through Wings of Desire, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com