CRITERION CLOSET
2026 Oscar Nominees
98th Academy Awards | March 15, 2026 | Confirmed Criterion Closet visits

With the 98th Academy Awards just days away (March 15, 2026), the film world is obsessing over wardrobe and speeches. But at Woolf+Lapin, we’re looking at something more intimate: the “Criterion Closet Picks.”

Of this year’s Academy Awards nominees and breakout stars, we have selected seven who have stepped into the legendary Criterion Closet—that cramped, holy-grail-filled room where the world’s best artists reveal the films that actually made them. If you want to know why Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein feels so haunting, or how Mary Bronstein crafted the most talked-about indie of the year, the answers could very well be on these shelves.

Guillermo del Toro
Best Director | Best Adapted Screenplay Frankenstein
Criterion Picks:
Charade (Stanley Donen), The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick), Crumb (Terry Zwigoff), The Magician (Ingmar Bergman), The 400 Blows (Truffaut), Paths of Glory (Kubrick).

The visit that started it all. Del Toro was the very first guest in the entire Criterion Closet Picks series in 2010, filmed on an iPhone. He has since returned for a second visit. His picks are a masterclass in art horror and the esoteric treated with great reverence for the medium.
First Visit

Josh Safdie
Best Director | Best Original Screenplay Marty Supreme
Criterion Picks:
Mike Leigh’s Meantime, Ermanno Olmi’s Il Posto, Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped plus a sprawling raid of grindhouse, Italian neo-realism, and New York underground cinema.

The Safdies arrived together for their visit. Josh and Benny can barely contain themselves; pulling titles off shelves mid-sentence and finishing each other’s thoughts. Their taste is restless and deeply serious about street-level realism. Josh is nominated solo this year for Marty Supreme.
Joint Visit with Benny | Benny Solo

Joachim Trier
Best Director | Best Original Screenplay Sentimental Value
Criterion Picks:
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader), Six Moral Tales (Eric Rohmer), Weekend (Godard), L’eclisse and Red Desert (Antonioni).

Trier is precise and impassioned; a filmmaker who speaks about influences with the clarity of someone who has actually absorbed them rather than listed them. His picks map perfectly onto his filmmaking: interior, romantic, formally rigorous. His current Best Director nomination for Sentimental Value makes this visit especially resonant.
Joachim’s Closet Criterion Picks

Mary Bronstein
Best Actress | If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
Criterion Picks:
Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner), Merrily We Go to Hell (Dorothy Arzner), Frownland (Ronald Bronstein), Daddy Longlegs (Josh and Benny Safdie), Inland Empire (David Lynch), This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer), Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978 (Chantal Akerman), Six Moral Tales (Eric Rohmer).

She is intense, and uncompromisingly feminist, treating the closet like a research library. She bypasses the “flashy” picks to advocate for feminist pioneers, specifically a pair of films by Dorothy Arzner (Dance, Girl, Dance and Merrily We Go to Hell). Speaking of her as the only female filmmaker in the studio system of the 30s and 40s. She pulls out Frownland where she met her husband Ronald Bronstein. She speaks with deep reverence about Chantal Akerman and David Lynch as her creative “idols,” explaining how Akerman’s sense of space and Lynch’s surreal dread inform her own directorial eye. And the seminal This is Spinal Tap as a comedy without jokes.
Bronstein’s Visit.

ACTORS
Ethan Hawke
Best Actor Blue Moon
Criterion Picks:
Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné), films of Wim Wenders, Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir), An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion)

Hawke has two Criterion Closet visits: one with longtime collaborator Jonathan Marc Sherman, and one with his daughter Maya Hawke ahead of their film Wildcat, which is the highest viewed video on Criterion’s channel. This father-daughter visit in particular is unusually warm.They bond over Children of Paradise and the films of Wim Wenders, with Ethan playing the role of the proud mentor and Maya bringing a fresh, modern perspective on titles like Frances Ha and 3 Women. The video is less about “collecting” and more about how film acts as a language between generations; Ethan credits these movies for shaping him as both a father and an artist. Where else will you find out Hawk went on his first date with Uma Thruman to see Cassavettes’s Husbands?
With Jonathan Marc Sherman
With Maya Hawke

Elle Fanning
Best Supporting Actress Sentimental Value
Criterion Picks:
3 Women (Robert Altman), The Red Shoes (Powell & Pressburger), Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks), Election (Alexander Payne).

Elle Fanning’s visit was timed to the NYFF 2025 premiere of Sentimental Value. During it, she specifically cites The Worst Person in the World as the film that made her want to work with Joachim Trier who then cast her in Sentimental Value, for which she is now Oscar-nominated. Her picks are eclectic and personal, leaning into films about women defined by their own desires rather than the plot around them.
Elle Fanning’s Criterion Visit

Stellan Skarsgård
Best Supporting Actor | Sentimental Value
Criterion Picks:
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa), John Cassavetes: Five Films (Collector’s Set), La strada (Federico Fellini), Naked (Mike Leigh), particularly celebrating Katrin Cartlidge’s performance, City Lights (Charles Chaplin), Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné).

His visit, he likens to stepping into a fabulous goldmine of collective memory. He is in wonder regarding Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurais which he has showed to his kids as violence done properly. In his Criterion bag he puts, Fellini’s 8½, Mike Leigh’s Naked and of course the works of Cassavetes, which he considers the birth of Modern Cinema. He goes on to say he cries at the end of Chaplin’s City Lights every time he watches it.
Stellan Skarsgård’s visit

Début 2026, Woolf+Lapin a conclu un partenariat en production et en représentation avec Citizen Skull, basé à Los Angeles — non pas dans une logique d’expansion, mais dans un souci d’alignement réfléchi. Ce type de rapprochement ne nous est pas étranger. Au fil des années, Woolf+Lapin a su nouer des collaborations structurantes, notamment avec CinéGroupe (CG2 Media Network). Concrètement, ce partenariat nous rapproche davantage : des conversations de haut niveau, des opportunités bien réelles, et d’une lecture encore plus fine du marché américain tel qu’il se présente aujourd’hui. Dans ce contexte, Woolf+Lapin est en permanence à la rencontre de nouveaux talents — et plus encore actuellement. Nous recherchons activement des créateurs de contenu singuliers (auteurs, réalisateurs, technologues créatifs, etc.), que vous souhaitiez évoluer dans ce cadre élargi et transfrontalier ou emprunter d’autres trajectoires créatives à nos côtés.

In early 2026, Woolf+Lapin entered into a production and representation partnership with LA-based Citizen Skull — not as an expansion move, but as a deliberate alignment. This isn’t unfamiliar territory for us. Woolf+Lapin has partnered meaningfully in the past — notably with CinéGroupe (CG2 Media Network). In practical terms, this new partnership brings greater proximity: to higher-level conversations, to real deal flow, and to an even clearer view of the U.S. market as it exists today. As a result, Woolf+Lapin is always recruiting — but even more so now. We are actively looking for new, singularly talented directors, writers, and content creators, whether you’re interested in operating within this expanded, cross-border framework or pursuing other creative paths with us.

By Sinclair + Stephan Dubreuil

Through their company Artists Equity,  Ben Affleck and Matt Damon produced and starred in the police thriller RIP. And they stopped in at the Joe Rogan Experience to promote their new production, jokingly mentioning the regular press junkets on the circuit, speculating that talking to Joe Rogan alone could potentially be more viable than the aggregate of all their other interviews. 

Among many other things, Affleck and Damon talked about Hunter S. Thompson, Chris Nolan’s Odyssey, MMA Fighting and the very astutely produced Adolescence, vaunting its straight up no-formula streamer production. The two brought up their negotiation with Netflix, and the decision to go for a streaming release instead of a theatrical one. They knew subjecting some of the plotting to data could make their film that much more successful.

Netflix, they noted, outlined five tiers of performance tied to financial incentives, with the highest defined by a 110% watch rate, meaning every subscriber watches a title, with some returning for repeat viewings. A rare occurrence.

More tellingly, they were encouraged to have a set piece in the first five minutes as well as reiterating the plot several times. The data suggests viewers are often distracted, on their phones or simply less attentive while watching amid the comforts and interruptions of domestic life. Add to that the growing share of content consumed on smartphones, and it is little wonder audiences are increasingly served repeated plot beats and oversized moments at sometimes incongruous points.

Affleck articulated the average viewer’s calculus succinctly: the cumulative cost of a large flatscreen, sound system, subscriptions, and reliable Wi-Fi has effectively recreated a customizable theater at home. Small surprise, then, that many contemporary streaming titles are written for the “second screen,” more tell than show,  a reversal of the cinematic language Affleck and Damon grew up in.

The consolation is that film buffs will always know what filmmakers’ work is meant to be seen in cinemas, on the big screen. For example, Affleck mentioned Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Odyssey. 

The industry has spent the past few years narrating its own disruption (pandemic aftershocks, labor strikes, AI, the recalibration of streaming) as if uncertainty were a temporary condition. Rogan’s widely circulated episode offers something clearer: not resolution, but recognition. From Affleck and Damon’s vantage point, the path forward is less about stability than about momentum. Films are still getting made. Deals are still closing. Careers are still steaming ahead. Uncertainty, it seems, is the only constant.

Pierre “Pyaré” Friquet is a French XR creator and director whose work spans fiction, documentary, video games, and immersive experiences. A graduate of the Film & Television Institute of India, he developed early on an approach that blends classical storytelling, technological innovation, and sensory experimentation.

PYARé is best known for his award-winning immersive works. Spaced Out, his aquatic VR installation, was selected at the Sundance Festival and showcased in the cultural program of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. He was creative collaborator and editor on the VR documentary You Destroy, We Create, produced by Meta, was nominated for an Emmy Award and won a Peabody Award. His pieces Jet Lag, Vibrations and Patterns have been presented at Cannes, NewImages, MUTEK, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma.

His work as a director and narrative designer also extends to video games (Captain Nemo, Kei’s Dream), AR, video mapping, immersive domes, and social VR. He has collaborated with major artists and institutions, including Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Michel Jarre, Marc Caro, Chanel, Christie’s, Orange, and the French Ministry of Culture.

PYARé is the founder of NiGHT Immersion, a studio combining art and technology, behind MeRCURY, a waterproof VR mask designed for pool-based experiences. His work has been featured in Wired, Forbes, The Verge, Vice, CNET, and Rolling Stone.

After living in India, South Africa, and Canada, he is now based in Paris, where he is completing a video game for Meta as well as a documentary for an American streaming platform.