My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)

He's also one of my favourite film makers - Canadian of course. It's an incredibly beautiful story about trying to make a portrait of a town. Only people like Balzac try to do stuff like that - doing a whole portrait of a town - but his very weird mother keeps popping in. I can relate to that as well. He also did a film called The Saddest Music In The World which is really good. It might even be my pick over My Winnipeg because it stars Isabella Rossellini. They're having a contest for the saddest music in the world and Isabella is on the jury and she has a glass leg that she drinks beer out of. The losers are all catapulted into a gigantic swimming pool sized vat of beer. All the contestants are each sadder than the next: you've got a really dreary Norwegian folk duo and these Hawaiians that come in sobbing. Then America enters without an act so he hires all the losers, puts them into his show and, of course, wins. I love that film.