Princess Soraya acted in one film called I Tre Volti (The Three Faces), featuring 3 segments co-written by her husband Franco Indovina, who also directed one segment. Who directed the other two
LEVEL 4 — ⭐ MASTER
The Master level is not simply a test of whether you have seen these films — it is a test of whether you truly know them. Twelve questions drawn from the outer edges of cinema history, probing craft, context, and connection. The kind of knowledge required here is not accumulated in a season of dedicated streaming. It is the residue of years. No casual familiarity will carry you through this round.
In 1965, one of the most photographed women in the world stepped in front of a movie camera for the only time in her life. Princess Soraya — the former Empress of Iran, whose divorce from Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had kept the world's tabloids running for years — appeared in I Tre Volti (The Three Faces), an Italian anthology film structured across three separate segments. She appears in all three: alongside producer Dino De Laurentiis in the first, with Richard Harris in the second, and with Alberto Sordi in the third. All three segments were co-written by her companion, director Franco Indovina, who helmed one of them. The other two were entrusted to directors from the very summit of Italian cinema. Indovina died tragically young when Alitalia Flight 112 crashed on approach to Palermo in May 1972.
Two Chinese films. Two feats of sustained, unbroken cinematography. The first, released in 2015, contains a single continuous take lasting forty minutes. The second, from 2018, holds for a full hour without a cut — a sequence that dissolves the boundary between cinema and dream. Both films were made by the same director, working from his home region of Guizhou. His 2015 feature was remarkable for another reason: it contained no professional actors whatsoever. The cast was composed entirely of locals — most of them the director's own relatives, including his uncle-in-law in the central role.
The 1956 drama Storm Center had a difficult life before a single frame was shot. It stars Bette Davis as a librarian who refuses to remove a book on Communism from her shelves — making it the first American film to directly confront the McCarthyite climate of censorship and fear. The role proved too incendiary for most of Hollywood's major names: Mary Pickford, Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, and Loretta Young all turned it down. Davis took it on, alongside Brian Keith and Kim Hunter. The story drew loosely from the real-life case of librarian Ruth Brown. What makes it additionally notable is that the man who directed it — a distinguished screenwriter — stepped behind the camera for the one and only time in his career.
The 2003 French thriller 36 — directed and co-written by Olivier Marchal — sets two rival Paris detectives, played by Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu, against each other in a struggle for promotion while a brutal criminal operates in the shadows. In 2019, the story crossed to Korea, remade within the conventions of Korean action cinema. The question is who directed the Korean version.
Un Baiser Papillon (A Butterfly Kiss, 2011) was written and directed by Karine Silla, with a score composed by Angelo Badalamenti — the longtime collaborator of David Lynch. The supporting ensemble includes Elsa Zylberstein, Nicolas Giraud, Cécile de France, Édith Scob, and Gérard Depardieu. At the center of the film are two leads whose names, in French cinema, carry considerable weight.
Loves of Three Queens (1954) — also released as The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships — is an anthology film tracing the romantic histories of legendary women. Its production history was fractious: the project originated as a television concept developed by Edgar G. Ulmer, but Ulmer quit during filming after irreconcilable clashes with the film's star. Marc Allégret stepped in to complete the picture. Among the other notable presences involved: director Gérard Oury appears on screen as Napoleon, and a young Roger Vadim contributed to the screenplay.
Robert Zemeckis's 2020 adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1983 novel The Witches was the second film version of the story, following Nicolas Roeg's memorably unsettling 1990 film with Anjelica Huston. The new production starred Anne Hathaway, with Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, and Chris Rock in supporting roles, and a score by Alan Silvestri. Two directors of significant international standing served as co-producers — and one of them also co-wrote the screenplay.
Trauma (1993) marked Dario Argento's first production made in the United States. It starred Christopher Rydell alongside Argento's daughter Asia, whose character was drawn in part from the life of her half-sister Anna — Daria Nicolodi's daughter from a previous relationship — who had struggled with anorexia. Anna died in a scooter accident in 1994, shortly after the film's release, but she appears briefly in the closing credits, dancing on a balcony. The film assembled a notable American supporting cast around its two leads.
A 2003 Los Angeles action film follows two LAPD detectives through a case saturated with the texture of the city. Around them circles one of the more eclectic supporting ensembles of the decade: Lena Olin, Lolita Davidovich, Gladys Knight, Martin Landau, Eric Idle, Robert Wagner, and Smokey Robinson all appear in smaller roles. Ron Shelton directed.
Larry Clark's Another Day in Paradise (1998) is a hard, unsparing crime drama following two couples — addicts, petty criminals — as they drift through a world of drug robberies and mounting desperation. One couple is played by Vincent Kartheiser and Natasha Gregson Wagner, the daughter of Natalie Wood. The other two leads had appeared together on screen as a couple twenty-four years earlier, in Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975). The film keeps one further statistic: the word "fuck" appears 327 times across its 101-minute running time.
Juan Antonio Bardem's Nunca Pasa Nada (Nothing Ever Happens, 1963) is a Spanish-French co-production shot in both languages, following a French showgirl recovering in provincial Spain after an operation. The film entered competition at the Venice Film Festival and features a score by Georges Delerue. It carries an additional layer of interest for students of Spanish cinema: Rafael Bardem appears in a supporting role — the father of director Juan Antonio Bardem, and the grandfather of Javier Bardem, making Juan Antonio Javier's uncle. Corinne Marchand plays the French lead, opposite a male co-star the question asks you to name.
Joe Gould's Secret (2000) was directed by Stanley Tucci, who also appears in the film alongside Hope Davis, Sarah Hyland, Celia Weston, Susan Sarandon, Patricia Clarkson, and Steve Martin. It is based on a true story drawn from the journalism of Joseph Mitchell, specifically his collection Up in the Old Hotel (1992), a gathering of portraits of eccentric and forgotten New Yorkers from the middle of the twentieth century. The title character — the singular, elusive Joe Gould — was brought to life by one of the four actors listed.
Twelve questions, and very little margin for error. A deposed empress's only screen performance. An unmarked masterwork from Guizhou. A library under McCarthyite siege. A Bardem family gathering in provincial Spain. The films here do not ask to be loved — they ask to be known. If you've arrived at the end of this list with confidence, you are the person other cinephiles phone when they've exhausted every other option. Good luck. You may need less of it than you think.