director of Moune ǒ (2022)

To read:

• Quand je tourne mes films – Hirokazu Kore-eda (2019)
• Dalva – Jim Harrison (1996)
• Brothers and Keepers – John Edgar Wideman (1984)

To listen :

• Self titled – Josy Masse (1971)
• Promises – Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra album (2021)
• Cendre – Fennesz & Ryūichi Sakamoto (2007)

To watch :

• Still Walking – Hirokazu Kore-eda (2008)
• We Are Inside – Farah Kassem (2024)
• Our Memory Belongs to Us – Rami Farah (2021)
• Léon G. Damas – Sarah Maldoror (1994)
• Princess Mononoke – Hayao Miyazaki (1997)

director of Warsha (2022)

a special contemporary Arabic edition: some musical artists and films from across the region from the past 20 years.

To watch:

• West Beirut – Ziad Doueiri
• A Sad And Beautiful World – Cyril Aris
• Goodbye Julia – Mohamed Kordofani
• The Blue Caftan – Maryam Touzani
• Bye Bye Tiberias – Lina Soualem
• The Alleys – Bassel Ghandour
• Caramel – Nadine Labaki
• Gaza Mon Amour – Tarzan And Arab Nasser
• You Will Die At 20 – Amjad Abu Alala
• The Blessed – Sofia Djama
• Sheikh Jackson – Sheikh Jackson
• Wajib – Annemarie Jacir
• The Burdened – Amr Gamal
• Paradise Now – Hany Abu-Assad
• Omar – Hany Abu-Assad
• Ajami – Yaron Shani & Scandar Copti
• The Insult – Ziad Doueiri
• The Time That Remains – Elia Suleiman
• Riverbed – Bassem Breish
• Beauty And The Dogs – Kaouther Ben Hania
• A Son – Mehdi Barsaoui
• Souad – Ayten Amin
• The Brink Of Dream – Nada Riyadh &Ayman El Amir
• 5 Broken Cameras – Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi
• Costa Brava, Lebanon – Mounia Akl
• Death Of A Virgin, And The Sin Of Not Living – George Peter Barbari
• Memory Box – Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
• 1982 – Oualid Mouaness
• Do You Love Me – Lana Daher
• Much Loved – Nabil Ayouch
• Under The Fig Trees – Erige Sehiri

To listen:

• Mashrou’ Leila
• Shkoon
• Soapkills
• Maryam Saleh
• Yuma
• Cairokee
• Emel
• Bedouin Burger
• Gharam Electric
• Rust
• El Waili
• Dafencii
• Rayyes Bek

director of Sun Dog (2020) and Loynes (2025)

• Welcome (To Death Row) – Bernard Szajner (music)
  Let’s start with what must be the soundtrack of the new project I’m writing at the moment. Full of energy and drama, built around that irresistibly cheesy 80s synth.

• Flesh – Paul Morrissey (film)
  A mesmerizing, raw film produced by Andy Warhol — first row on the bedside table for the new project as well.

• Pornografia – Witold Gombrowicz (Book)
  Last summer’s love story. Eroticism stripped down to its geometry. Thank you Aurélia for the recommendation.

• Come up and see me – Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld (music)
  Blixa Bargeld is the lead singer of Einstürzende Neubauten — who make the best live shows in the universe — and composed the music I used at the end of Loynes. This side project with Teardo is simpler, but just as fascinating. Come Up and See Me is 100% stolen in my new project.

• Go Go Tales – Abel Ferrara (Film)
  A carnivalesque huis clos with Willem Dafoe as the owner of a struggling strip club in Manhattan.
  Hand in hand with Loynes at the Cinémathèque Française, early 2026.

• The Rehearsal (Season 1) – Nathan Fielder (serie)
  The most exciting and original audiovisual work since The Return (Twin Peaks S03), in my opinion. A real feeling of doors opening in filmmaking.

• Shintokumaru (身毒丸) – J.A. Seazer (music)
  From the theatre troupe that composed the music used in the intro of Loynes. Wild hearts. Favorite part at 42:30.

• A Date in Minsk – Nikita Lavretski (film)
  An inspiring film by a young director I met last summer in Vilnius. We work in opposite directions, but I have the greatest respect and admiration for him. Also watch the very funny Q&A of this film with Radu Jude (who seems to be a fan of Lavretski).

• Gargoyles – Thomas Bernhard (book)
  Okay, this one may not be a recent discovery, but it was a major inspiration for Loynes (the self and otherness) and is still my favorite novel.

• The Top 50 of Albert Serra (list)
  Cheating here, but this has truly been a revelation in recent months. The more you watch, the more the list develops a soul of its own. It walks the traditional road of cinema — but does so with a kind of Monty Python–style silly walk.

director of the short film No One Knows I Disappeared (2025)

• The State I Am In – Christian Petzold (film)
• Asako I & II – Ryusuke Hamaguchi (film)
• Badlands – Terrence Malick (film)
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul – Rainer Werner Fassbinder (film)
• A Short Film About Love – Krzysztof Kieślowski (film)
• 无钱优雅 – Amy Yamada (book)
• Colors Out of Space – Howard Phillips Lovecraft (short story)
• On This Site – Joel Sternfeld (Photography)
• Gyongyhaju Lany – Omega (music)
• Rainy Night – Sinn Sisamouth (music)

director of the animated short film Can You Hear Me? (2025)

to read:

• Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte (book)
• Look Who’s Morphing – Tom Cho (book)
• The first Bad Man – Miranda July (book)
• Detransition, baby – Torrey Peters (book)
• On Self-hatered – School of Life (book)

to listen:

• NTS – Shukai (radio episode)

to watch:

• Thirst – Park Chan-wook, 2009 (film)
• Please, baby, please – Amanda Kramer, 2022 (film)
• Apocalypse After – Bertrand Mandico, 2018 (film)
• The Fin – Syeyoung Park, 2025 (film)
• Fables 1 – Wong Ping, 2018 (series)
• Fables 2 – Wong Ping, 2019 (series)
• Scavengers Reign – Joseph Bennett, 2023 (series)
• Beef – Lee Sung Jin, 2023 (series)

director of the short film Al Basateen (2025)

watching and reading in preparation of a new script

• Kid Wolf and Kraken Boy – Sam J. Miller, 2022 (book)
• Manta Ray – Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, 2018 (film)
• The Song of Achilles, a novel by Madeline Miller, 2021 (book)
• Heretical Aesthetics, Pasolini on Painting, by Pier Paolo Pasolini – 1974 (especially the article Caravaggio’s Light) (book)
• After Life – Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998 (film)
• Body Rice – Hugo Vieira da Silva, 2006 (film)
• Zig-Zag – Raoul Ruiz, 1980 (film)
• Poems 1962-2020 – Louise Glückassics, 2022 (book)
• Image Acts: A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency, – Horst Bredekamp, 2017 (essay)
• Helen – Euripides, 412 B.C.E (play)
  (For Euripides, Helen never left Greece. She was only an avatar, a ghost. The Greeks needed an excuse to wage the Great War. Euripides was already strikingly modern in his critique of the myths that founded Greece.)

director of the feature Home Invasion (2023)

I am sitting in my garden watching an edit of a new film. Here are some encounters that have stuck with me recently.

• Poison For Fairies – Carlos Enrique Taboada, 1984 (film)
• Bang The Drum Slowly – Mark Harris, 1956 (book)

(The spells we cast together, they protect us until they burst and the inevitable happens. What a time it was in that little kingdom of ours – positive & negative)

• Baby Steps – Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch & Bennett Foddy, 2025 (video game)
• I Love My Computer – Ninajirachi, 2025 (music – album)

(Your body is not what it was. You’re falling over laughing, wondering how you ever got upright in the first place)

• Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy – Tony Buba, 1988 (film)
• Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin, 2014 (book)

(A love and a hurt that transmogrifies, contorts commitments and makes a stranger. But you are still listening, returning the calls)

• Bring Her Back – Danny & Michael Philippou, 2025 (film)
• Resident Evil – Friendship, 2025 (music – song)

(Behind closed doors all houses are haunted, “guess this is how people live?”)

• Neither Fish nor Fowl – Clara Helbig, 2025 (short film)
• Empty Alcove/Rotting Figure – Dan Guthrie, 2025 (installation)

(What is there when it shouldn’t be? How can the obvious be spoken when the circus has come to town?)

director of The End of Suffering (a proposal) (2020), Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year (2018) & HIWA (2017).

Books| Songs| Films

(One falling into the other -willingly or not- just like when attending a film festival.)

• Secrets of Beauty – Jean Cocteau, Eris Press (book)
• Sounds –  Wassily Kandinsky, Yale University Press (book)
• Susumu Yokota – Magic Thread (music)
• Blue Nights –  Joan Didion (book)
• PLOTINUS – Ennead IV.8: On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies, Parmenides Publishing (book)
• Vincent Gallo – Recordings Of Music For Film (music)
• Sirat – Oliver Laxe (film)
• McShrunk: Substack by Darian Leader (substack)
• Occultism and the Origins of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Ferenczi and the Challenge of Thought Transfrence -Maria Pierri (book)
• Maria By Callas – Tom Wolf (film)

director of Life Lasts Two Days (2022)

Daylight (with some night inside)

• Caro Michele – Natalia Ginzburg (book)
• Long Season – Fishmans // Tropical Entropy – Nick León (music)
• Sincero, Apaixonado – Margaux Dauby, Raul Domingues (short film)
• The Apothecary Diaries – Season 1 – Norihiro Naganuma (series)

Night (with some daylight inside)

• La Prueba – Cesar Aira (book)
• hexed! – aya // Dewdrops in the Garden – Deee-Lite (music)
• 100 Boyfriends Mixtape – Brontez Purnell (film)
• Salomé – André Antônio (film)

director of Sawo Matang (2023)

reading:

• Kepayang Digest (zine)
  
their zines can be hard to come by, but they are also on Substack which I highly recommend subscribing to while its still free
• My Dream Job – Norman Pasaribu (book)
• Women who Run with the wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estés (book)
  
Still continuously reading this, I pick it up and put it back down every couple months/ weeks since early 2024, and oddly enough whenever I do, the chapter I’m reading eerily resonates with what I’m going through at that moment.
• a lot of articles on water, and collective memory, and Jakarta’s landscape as a forgotten delta

watching:

• The Girlfriend (series)
• Die, My Love – Lynne Ramsay (film)
  made me re edit my latest film

• Watching a lot of high school first love trope romcoms and calling it research for my feature (20th century girl, Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na, 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days to name a few)
• A River Called Titas – Ritwik Ghatak (film)
  
Again back on the water theme

Listening..

• LUX – Rosalia
  13 different languages? wtf
• Podcasts on Carl Jung and synchronicities and the unconscious (it’s another rabbit hole)

director of A Move (2024)

• Sheyda Shodam – Shahram Nazeri (music)
• Desert – Kayhan Kalhor & Mohamadreza Shajarian (music)
• Shoor Dar Faragh – MohammadReza Shajarian (music)
• Chouni Bi Man – Homayoun Shajarian (music)
• Close-Up – Abbas Kiarostami (film)
• Where Is the Friend’s House? – Abbas Kiarostami (film)
• A Special Day – Ettore Scola (film)
• The House Is Black – Forough Farrokhzad (film)
• Divan of Hafez (Persian poetry from the 14th century) (book)
• Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler (book)

director of Green Grey Black Brown (2025), The Moon Also Rises (2024), Look on the Bright Side (2023) and One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean (2021).

It’s always hard to narrow things down since there are so many that resonate, but here’s a list of works that have been shaping my thoughts recently:

• The Vanishing – George Sluizer (film)
• The Peregrine – J. A. Baker (book)
• In the Eye of the Wild – Nastassja Martin (book)
• Bodyguard RAIN – James Ferraro (sound)
• The Age of Wire and String – Ben Marcus (book)
• Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang – Duan Chengshi (book)
• Sounds of Earth Part 2 – Cindy Coutant & Théo Pozoga (sound)
• How Wheeling Feels When the Ground Walks Away – James Hof (sound)
• Inner Experience, Georges Bataille (book)
• Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time, John D. Boswell (video)

director of Arnold Is a Model Student (2022)

To watch:

• A Useful Ghost – Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, 2025
• What Does That Nature Say to You – Hong Sang-soo, 2025
• Romería – Carla Simón, 2025
• Dracula – Radu Jude, 2025
• Kontinental ’25 – Radu Jude, 2025
• Love On Trial – Koji Fukada, 2025
• Hair, Paper, Water… – Nicolas Graux & Truong Minh Quý, 2025
• Young Mothers – Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2025
• Sirāt – Oliver Laxe, 2025
• Videograms of a Revolution – Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujică, 1992

director of the short film Like a Sick Yellow (2024)

This is lately. And because my sister is a pianist, I keep drifting closer to music, trying to hear what it knows.

• Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 – Beethoven (music) – read the score! *
  to see how the storytelling unfolds; through shifting themes and emotions, as motives develop to shape the narrative. Did the same with Kaija Saariaho’s “Ciel d’hiver” and Sarah Nemstov, “White Eyes Erased”.
• 60 Fotos – David Evans (Author), Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Photographer)
  for my love of collage
• Too Much of Life: Complete Chronicles – Clarice Lispector (book)
  gift from my sister
• Dear Theo by Vincent Van Gogh (book)
  letters to his brother
• Love Streams (1984) – John Cassavetes (film)
• Oh Dem Watermelons (1965) – Robert Nelson, soundtrack by Steve Reich (short film)
• “The Peasants’ War “ (1983-1987) by Werner Tübke – in the Panorama Museum Bad Frankenhausen (Thuringia) (exhibition)
  A “visual symphony”. At 14 meters high and 123 meters long. Locked in a rotunda. Completely immersed. Ninety minutes!– to get through it. All the extraordinary density of detail hits. Makes you question the ‘static.’
• A. Schnittke: Concerto for piano and strings (1979).
• Coréennes – Chris Marker (book)
  A recent discovery.
• Klänge (Sounds) – Wassily Kandinsky (book)

*23 of September, an example of score reading and analysing. 

director of the animated short films Ecorce (2020) and Sans Voix (2024)

• The Celestine Prophecy – James Redfield (book)
• Breath – James Nestor (book)
• Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996-2003) – Dream Dolphin (music)
• Mershiy – Volodymyr Gnatenko (music)
• Marcel Cellier Présente: Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares – Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares (music)
• Ame Agaru – Ylia (music)
• Positive Nature – Reflex Blue (music)
• Song to song – Terrence Malick (film)
• Descending the Mountain – Maartje Nevejan (film)
• Samourai Jack, latest season (series)