6 Apr 2026

Boots Riley’s Closet Picks

The writer and director reminisces about seeing Black Girl in the cinema with his mom as a child, shares how True Stories and Election influenced his approach to filmmaking, and talks about the emotional truth behind the visual artifice of Pedro Almodóvar’s work.

Boots Riley: everything they reached for, and whose taste is nearest

choices

12

8 single, 4 box sets

single films

8

chosen on their own

box sets

4

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.

SET Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène 852 Black Girl 1966 SET Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films 951 True Stories 1986 904 Election 1999 911 The Hero 1966 948 The Princess Bride 1987 SET The Qatsi Trilogy 1012 All About My Mother 1999 855 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 1988 432 Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters 1985 SET Essential Fellini

single film, with its spine number box set

	Chose	Director	Year	Taken by
1	Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène box set, 3 films			3
2	Black Girl	Ousmane Sembène	1966	7
3	Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films box set, 4 films			11
4	True Stories	David Byrne	1986	7
5	Election	Alexander Payne	1999	5
6	The Hero	Satyajit Ray	1966	3
7	The Princess Bride	Rob Reiner	1987	9
8	The Qatsi Trilogy box set, 3 films			7
9	All About My Mother	Pedro Almodóvar	1999	7
10	Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown	Pedro Almodóvar	1988	7
11	Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters	Paul Schrader	1985	6
12	Essential Fellini box set, 14 films			16

How far across film history it reaches

Where this haul sits in film history single films 1966 to 1999, box sets 1950 to 2002

Essential Fellini

The Qatsi Trilogy

Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène

Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films

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

Its 32films run 57.9 hours. The median visit runs 19.2 hours, over the 375 whose every runtime is on record.

That is 289.3 minutes of film for each of its 12 choices, counting a box set as the one choice it was. Across the 375 visits with a complete total, the median is 136.4 minutes.

How unusual this haul was

Its 12 choices had been taken by 7.33 visits each on average, counting a box set as one thing. Every one of them has been taken by somebody else too. The least-picked was Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène, taken by 3 visits in total.

This visit reached the work of Alexander Payne, through Election and David Byrne, through True Stories, who have been in this closet too. Not one of those reaches is returned.

On Vimeo · On criterion.com