Josh and Benny Safdie are a team of filmmakers responsible for future classics like the unpredictable Good Time with Robert Pattinson and the frenetic, anxiety-inducing Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. In addition to his work behind the camera, Benny is also a fantastic actor, turning in great performances in diverse projects like Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and the TV series The Curse with Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone. Taken together, the Safdie Brothers have certainly made their mark on modern-day cinema.

Like most successful filmmakers, the Safdie brothers are also avid cinephiles who have gushed about dozens of films that inspired them and influenced their approach to storytelling. The Brothers have great taste, leaning toward classic dramas, and even the occasional black comedy; with such a wide range of tastes, it is no surprise that the movies that inspired the Safdie Brothers share this same ethos. Here are 10 of their most intriguing recommendations, which should appeal to many fans who share in the same intense, eclectic work.

10 'Crumb' (1994)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Crumb is a documentary about Robert Crumb, an influential and controversial underground cartoonist. Through interviews with Crumb, his family, colleagues, and other artists, the film delves not only into his work but also his dysfunctional childhood. We learn about Crumb's emotionally unstable older brother Charles, also an artist, who taught his siblings to draw. Similarly, Crumb's younger brother Maxon also struggles with mental health and lives like an ascetic in a run-down hotel. At the same time, the shadow of Crumb's authoritarian father looms over the whole project.

The film is a surreal investigation of darkness and trauma, examining addiction, mental illness, and, of course, art. It was widely acclaimed and has since appeared on some publications' lists of the greatest documentaries of all time. "Crumb falls into a rare group of documentaries," Josh said. "A hero like R. Crumb is so reclusive and so fickle about who he allows to get close to him, but close they get."

9 'A Man Escaped' (1956)

Director: Robert Bresson

Set during World War II, this French classic tells the story of Lieutenant Fontaine (François Leterrier), a Resistance fighter imprisoned by the occupying Germans. After discovering that the door of his cell is made of soft wood, he starts dreaming of freedom. This hope sustains him despite the harsh conditions. Over several months, Fontaine meticulously plans his escape from the fortress-like Montluc prison. The film ratchets up the tension as he makes progress, combining realist drama with the suspense of a thriller.

The filmmaking is impressively minimalist and bare-bones, and director Robert Bresson lets nothing go to waste: every shot serves a purpose, every hit on the soundtrack is carefully selected, and each of the sparse lines of dialogue has meaning. "[A Man Escaped] has to be my favorite movie of all time, just because it always makes me cry at the end because I feel like I’ve achieved something that the character achieves [...] It’s just so perfectly put together," Benny said.

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8 'The Moment of Truth' (1965)

Director: Francesco Rosi

Miguelín (Miguel Mateo, known as Miguelín) is a young man from a poverty-stricken family who moves to the city to find work. However, he struggles to get by, eventually taking up work as a bullfighter out of desperation. He becomes surprisingly successful, attaining fame and respect. This presents its own challenges, of course, and his work continues to place him in harm's way, where a single mistake can mean death. The film is a real gut punch, thanks to its no-holds-barred cinéma vérité approach. Many of the bullfighting scenes, in particular, are absolutely brutal.

More than being a profile of this bloody sport and a study of its protagonist, The Moment of Truth is an allegory about life in Spain under the dictator Francisco Franco. "I remember the feeling in my stomach, the horrific beauty and love affair Miguelín had with the bulls and life itself. I remember the devastation and the constant reminder that Miguelín was actually Miguelín," Josh said.

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7 'Opening Night' (1977)

Director: John Cassavetes

Gena Rowlands stars in this psychological drama as Myrtle Gordon, a renowned actress preparing for a Broadway play. One night after a performance, one of Myrtle's obsessed teenage fans runs after her and is fatally struck by a car. Myrtle is shaken by the incident and her mental state deteriorates. Her behavior becomes erratic, she starts drinking heavily, and she begins seeing visions of the girl while she performs.

A dense and challenging film, Opening Night was dismissed by critics on release but has come to be regarded as one of Cassavetes's strongest projects. "Cassavetes is a god and a hero," Josh said. "[His movies] are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa, and hold the feeling above anything else." An interesting bit of trivia: a scene in which Myrtle applies lipstick backstage clearly inspired a similar shot of Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

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6 'Close-Up' (1990)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

This masterpiece by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami focuses on Hossain Sabzian, a man who pretends to be the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinces a family that he plans to feature them in his next movie. Sabzian is exposed and taken to court, which is the central narrative in Close-Up. However, Kiarostami gets incredibly meta, enlisting Sabzian and the people he tricked to play themselves in the film.

In the process, Kiarostami turns Sabzian's lies into something of a reality, as the family members do, in fact, become the stars of a film. It makes for an incisive commentary on truth, lies, and the power of cinema. "The way that that film blends fiction and reality, it is a north star for me [...] The result is something that only film can give you. It makes you question your own self. It makes you question, what is a personality? It makes you question empathy [...] Masterpiece," Josh said.

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5 'Meantime' (1983)

Director: Mike Leigh

Meantime chronicles the lives of several working-class characters in a dreary London council estate during the Margaret Thatcher era. According to some, it's the best cinematic time capsule of that period in British history. At the heart of the story are two brothers, Colin (Tim Roth) and Mark (Phil Daniels), both out of work and struggling to define themselves. Their dire economic situation and dim prospects grind away at them, leading to family conflict and reckless decisions.

By turns funny and sad, the film was a breakthrough project for Mike Leigh, showing off his talent for realism and rich characterization. It also features phenomenal performances from Roth and Gary Oldman (who plays a skinhead), then in the early stages of their careers. "There’s a scene towards the end of the movie that remains a wild inspiration to us at all times,” Josh said. “I can’t have enough of it,” Benny added.

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4 'My Beautiful Laundrette' (1985)

Director: Stephen Frears

Another film set during the Thatcher years, My Beautiful Laundrette is a romantic comedy-drama about Omar (Gordon Warnecke), a young British-Pakistani man who takes over his uncle Nasser's (Saeed Jaffrey) struggling laundromat. When he reunites with Johnny (Daniel Day-Lewis), an old friend and former punk with a right-wing past, the two embark on a complex romantic and business partnership. However, various messy relationships threaten to complicate things. At the same time, some of Johnny's former gang friends target members of Omar's family, leading to a violent confrontation.

My Beautiful Laundrette is a defining early work by director Stephen Frears, who also made Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, and Philomena. The script by screenwriter Hanif Kureishi was also acclaimed and received an Oscar nomination. “[It's] one of the great early performances of Daniel Day-Lewis," Josh said. "Stephen Fears is like one of these incredible kind of shapeshifters, the way his career just ebbs and flows."

3 'Fox and His Friends' (1975)

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fox and His Friends is a drama by German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, most well-known for movies like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Fassbinder himself leads the cast here as Franz "Fox" Bieberkopf, a working-class gay man who wins the lottery and begins a relationship with Eugen (Peter Chatel), the son of a tycoon. Fox is in love, but Eugen may have ulterior motives.

Much of the plot concerns Fox's efforts to climb the social hierarchy, but his naïveté and lack of awareness pose all kinds of problems for him. He is a misfit, torn between worlds and unable to direct his life, even with his newfound wealth. Other characters seek to exploit him, and he finds himself in a never-ending stream of bad situations. The film is unrelentingly bleak, but Fassbinder has the directorial chops to keep it engaging. "It might be [our favorite Fassbinder film for] the title shot alone," Benny said.

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2 'The Player' (1992)

Director: Robert Altman

In The Player, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a smug and self-assured studio executive whose job is threatened when hotshot story executive Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) starts working at his company. To make matters worse, Mill begins receiving death threats from an aspiring screenwriter whose script he rejected. The problem is, he has no idea which writer it is. He sets out on a mission to identify the culprit, while also concocting schemes to sabotage Levy's career.

The Player is a black comedy that fires shots at the movie business (and perhaps 1980s capitalism as a whole), boasting an intricate plot, witty dialogue, and Robert Altman's trademark ensemble style. It also gets charmingly meta, like the scene where the characters discuss extended tracking shots, which itself is filmed with an extended tracking shot. Robbins's performance and the killer, rhythmic editing were widely praised, and it has since been ranked as one of the best movies of the 1990s. Josh called it the "perfect portrait of Hollywood."

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1 'Il Posto' (1961)

Director: Ermanno Olmi

Il Posto, (meaning "The Job") is a neorealist drama directed by Ermanno Olmi, the filmmaker behind the Palme d'Or-winning Tree of Wooden Clogs. This one follows a young man named Domenico (Sandro Panseri) who secures a low-level job at a faceless corporation in post-war Milan. The work is anonymous, mundane, and soul-crushing, but Domenico desperately needs the money. The only ray of light in his life is his meeting with a shy young woman named Antonietti (Loredana Detto). After their conversation, he struggles in vain to find her again.

The Safdie brothers said that Il Posto changed Benny’s life. "I was gonna be a physicist," Benny said. "I dropped out of my school and then Josh told me to come to his class, and they were showing all these neorealist films and this was one of the films that they were showing, and I remember just being like, ‘Oh my god, you can make movies like this?' And it was so shocking. And then I left [the class] and I went to the same school.”

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