There are five films I keep in a small canvas bag I bring on every shoot. Not because I watch them — I almost never watch them on the road — but because I want to be near them. Their physical proximity is the point.
A friend who teaches Russian literature once told me that he travels with the same paperback of War and Peace, falling apart at the binding, that he bought when he was nineteen. He has never once read it on a trip. But he likes to know it is there.
These are mine:
1. In the Mood for Love (2000). Wong Kar-wai. The pace at which Maggie Cheung walks down the staircase has shaped how I think about a take that is doing nothing.
2. A Brighter Summer Day (1991). Edward Yang. Four hours that prove restraint can be the most expansive thing in a movie.
3. The Headless Woman (2008). Lucrecia Martel. For the silences. For the way she lets you misunderstand a scene for thirty minutes before clarifying it.
4. Tokyo Story (1953). Ozu. I am putting this here because it is the only thing I have ever watched that has made me less afraid of doing nothing on screen.
5. Yi Yi (2000). Edward Yang again. Because I have a daughter now and the boy with the camera is everything I want her to grow up to be.
The bag stays under my trailer step. I am not sure when I will watch them next. That is fine.
— A.K., on the road, March 2026