Christopher Nolan, whose IMAX epic The Odyssey continues to rack up box office records and critical praise worldwide, has picked Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy during a visit to the Criterion Collection’s famed storage room in New York, calling the Bengali filmmaker one of India’s finest directors.In a video the Criterion Collection posted on X, Nolan is seen browsing the shelves for nearly five minutes, pulling out titles and reflecting on what each one meant to him as a filmmaker.On Ray’s work, he said, “And then there’s the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, one of the greatest Indian filmmakers. The trilogy starts with Pather Panchali, which is an absolutely incredible film. It just blew my mind. I haven’t yet seen parts two and three of the trilogy, so I’m pretty excited to get this and complete the story.”The three films in the series, Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959), are drawn from Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novels and chart Apu’s journey from a poor childhood in rural Bengal into adulthood.Nolan also picked up a collection of Martin Scorsese’s short films, telling the Criterion Collection, “Scorsese shorts, I’m going to have to grab that. I’ve seen The Big Shave, but I haven’t seen the other ones, so that’s pretty exciting.” He additionally cited Fritz Lang’s The Testament of Dr Mabuse as a reference point he and his brother studied while shaping the Joker for The Dark Knight.The visit came during Nolan’s third trip to India, part of his promotional run for The Odyssey. He had earlier filmed portions of Tenet in the country in 2019 and shot sequences for The Dark Knight Rises at Jodhpur’s Mehrangarh Fort in 2011.