Jim Jarmusch’s Favorite Films
at Ilusion Cinema, the Museum of Film Art of the National Film Archive–Audiovisual Institute (FINA), Warsaw
December 2021–January 2022
● Curating
Jim Jarmusch is one of the most distinctive and quietly radical voices in contemporary cinema. A New York-based heir to the French New Wave, he has always resisted the narrative formulas of Hollywood, creating instead a unique filmic universe inhabited by outsiders, drifters, and spiritual nomads. With a deadpan sense of humor and a love for unlikely juxtapositions, Jarmusch weaves together Native American philosophy and William Blake’s poetry, Japanese aesthetics and Brooklyn pigeon-keeping, Beat literature and punk subcultures. His films are patchworks of global references—meta-cultural mosaics with their own rhythm, tone, and storytelling logic.
For Jarmusch, filmmaking is about telling the same stories over and over again, but each time in a new way. As he often says, “Originality doesn’t exist.” What matters is how stories are told—the texture of the language, the attitude, the tone. In his famously casual and philosophical “rules” for making films (which double as life advice), Jarmusch argues that artists should steal from anywhere that inspires them. Cinema is not just cinema—it’s literature, music, painting, architecture, rhythm, intuition, emotion, accident. It is everything that touches the imagination and the soul. If nothing is original, then we are free to take what speaks to us—and in doing so, make it our own.
Jarmusch’s love of cinema began in earnest in 1975, during a semester abroad in Paris. While studying literature at Columbia University, he traveled to France to trace the surrealist footsteps of André Breton’s Nadja. What he found instead was the Cinémathèque française. There, he watched film after film—European, Japanese, Indian—and realized that cinema could evoke the same power as literature. When he returned to New York, he enrolled at NYU’s film school. The rest is history.
But Jarmusch has remained, in his words, “a film nerd.” He doesn’t just make movies—he watches them obsessively. He collects them. He talks about them with the curiosity of a lifelong student. Like many of us—whether cinephile, critic, or casual fan—he finds joy not only in creating, but in being a part of cinema’s shared experience: watching, observing, borrowing.
This December, alongside the retrospective 7 x Jarmusch (a selection of digitally restored films by the director), we present a curated program of Jim Jarmusch’s favorite films—movies he has cited in interviews as sources of inspiration, pleasure, and cinematic fascination.
The program includes
① Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) – A stark, devastating samurai drama that subverts the codes of honor and ritual. A defining example of Jarmusch’s deep appreciation for Japanese cinema.
② A Quiet Place in the Country (Elio Petri, 1968) – A psychedelic horror and artistic meltdown about a painter unraveling in the Italian countryside. Visually surreal, psychologically dense.
③ The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983) – A gothic and glamorous vampire film starring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie. Stylized to perfection, it blends eroticism with existential dread.
④ Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959) – A spontaneous, jazz-infused debut about race, intimacy, and alienation in New York. One of the earliest models for Jarmusch’s independent ethos.
⑤ Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) (Dino Risi, 1962) – A sharp, darkly comic road movie about two men driving through a changing Italy. Both lighthearted and existential, this film is Jarmuschian to its core.
⑥ Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975) – A lyrical, non-linear meditation on memory, time, and maternal love. One of Jarmusch’s all-time favorite films.
⑦ Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) – A metaphysical reverie about angels observing Berlin. Deeply poetic and spiritually curious, it echoes many of Jarmusch’s own obsessions.
⑧ The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973) – A haunting, melancholic vision of childhood set in post-Civil War Spain. Cinema becomes both escape and revelation.
⑨ Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966) – The suffering of the world, seen through the eyes of a donkey. Transcendent, deeply human—and a touchstone for minimalist cinema.
①⓪ The Night (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961) – A dissection of a dying relationship set over one long, alienated night. Elegant, icy, and emotionally precise.
①① Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) – Epic yet intimate, thrilling yet philosophical. A film that rewrote the grammar of cinema—and continues to resonate across genres.
①② Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959) – A study of solitude, redemption, and stolen gestures. A minimalist noir that lingers in the subconscious.
①③ The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962) – A late Western that deconstructs the myths of heroism and history. Jarmusch’s love for Ford is rooted in this film’s ambiguity.
①④ A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956) – An ascetic prison-break story where sound, silence, and small actions carry infinite weight. One of cinema’s most precise moral dramas.
①⑤ A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956) – An ascetic prison-break story where sound, silence, and small actions carry infinite weight. One of cinema’s most precise moral dramas.