Hand-Picked by Sandra Hüller

Everyone’s talking about Sandra Hüller. 2026 has been an annus mirabilis for this fascinating actor, who appeared in two of the year’s biggest budgeted studio films: sci-fi adventure Project Hail Mary (2026) and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s end-times satire, Digger (2026). And that’s not all: Hüller is front and center in Fatherland (2026) and Rose (2026), a pair of historical dramas that premiered at Cannes and the Berlinale, respectively, to critical acclaim. Two by two, Hüller is taking over our screens, and yet she’s no newcomer. Twenty years ago, her serious, Silver Bear–winning turn in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem (2006) established her as one of European cinema’s most accomplished leading women. She renewed and complicated her arthouse reputation a decade later, with a deftly tensioned, sophisticated but silly performance in Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann (2016). In that brilliantly off-kilter, Palme d’Or–nominated comedy, she endeared as a brusque, business-ambitious lost soul whose clowning father tries to tickle her out of her corporate torpor. 

But it wasn’t until she attended the Academy Awards® as a Best Actress nominee in 2024 that Hüller became a household name. Oscars® history was made that year when two non-English-language features competed for Best Picture, with Hüller giving talk-of-the-town performances in both. As a writer standing trial for the murder of her husband in Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or–winning Anatomy of a Fall (2023), and as the affectless wife of an Auschwitz commandant in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), Hüller made a profound impression on her Hollywood contemporaries, and proved herself a gift to filmmakers who are concerned at least as much with questions as with answers. Markus Schleinzer is another such director. In his compassionately political, seventeenth-century-set folktale, Rose, Hüller once more reveals her facility for rounding out the ambiguities that binaries flatten and disappear. Here, she brings a transfixing stillness to the role of a smallholder and war veteran who lives as a man—though her character has no desire to actually be one. As Rose explains at the film’s conclusion, it’s simpler than that: “There’s more freedom in trousers. And they’re just a bit of cloth.” Solid in her resolve, yet insecurely hidden, Hüller captivates in every scene of Schleinzer’s film, whose ferrous black-and-white images uncover soft hollows in homestead domesticity.

To celebrate that film’s arrival on the platform, and its submission for Best International Feature at the 2027 Academy Awards®, we invited Hüller to browse our library and draw up her favorite titles. Spanning fiction and documentary, her selections reflect a process of ongoing discovery, and a taste for nondidactic films as powerfully immersive as they are secretive and specific.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

“Almost every time I work on a film, _Jeanne Dielman_ is mentioned in one way or another. It is so often referenced that I became curious about it and wanted to find out its secret. The process of looking at things is very important to me. I discovered this film very late, but it made me happy to see it execute this process of watching in a consequential way. We learn about the characters and their values, behaviors, and feelings little by little, without any explanation or judgment. The acting, staging, lighting, and framing of this film is absolutely unique, and will likely inspire me forever.”

Four Roads (Alice Rohrwacher, 2020)

“I just love this film: how tender and humble it is, how much love it shows while also showing how fragile and valuable our relationships are—and even more so in times of crisis. That Alice kept moving when everything seemed to be standing still, and that she moved toward the ones around her rather than retreating into herself, is very beautiful. The choice of colors and film material underlines the abundance of life that we almost forgot in those years.”

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)

“Unforgettable. The connection between the characters—and the actors playing them—is so exact and yet so indescribable. It’s almost as if they are keeping a secret from us, and I don’t blame them. This film moves me and I can relate it to my own life.”

The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt, 2025)

 

“I chose this film because Kelly Reichardt is a very important filmmaker to me. Her films’ relationship to time, and their refusal of a certain kind of drama, is remarkable, as is her way of trusting the development of a story without pushing anything. I think I would always identify a film of hers even if I didn’t know it was hers. In this special case, I love the humor and humanity found in failure, and the desire for something bigger that cannot be fulfilled.” 

Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969)

“I could have chosen all of Wiseman’s movies: They are a never-ending source of inspiration and material for me. Here too, the art of just watching people and conflicts, taking the time to do so and letting situations unfold before our eyes, gives us a chance to think about what we see and learn about the world, without judgment or agenda.”