How a small room inside Criterion became one of cinema’s most revealing spaces for taste, influence and discovery.
There are few spaces in contemporary culture as influential as the Criterion Closet. It is not a museum, a theater or a famous film set. It is simply a small room inside The Criterion Collection’s New York office, lined floor to ceiling with more than a thousand films. Yet for filmmakers, actors, musicians, writers and devoted movie lovers, it has become one of the most recognizable destinations in cinema.
The Closet represents everything The Criterion Collection has spent more than four decades building. Founded in 1984, Criterion has dedicated itself to preserving and publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world. Long before streaming platforms reshaped how audiences watched movies, the company was restoring damaged negatives, commissioning essays, producing documentaries and creating definitive home editions that treated films as works of art rather than disposable entertainment. Every release reflected the same philosophy: great cinema deserves care, context and permanence.
That mission established Criterion as one of the most respected names in film preservation, but the company’s greatest cultural achievement arrived in a much quieter way.
In 2010, director Guillermo del Toro visited Criterion’s office and was filmed browsing the company’s stockroom, pulling films from the shelves and speaking about the works that had shaped him as both a filmmaker and a fan. There was no elaborate production, no interviewer steering the conversation and no script to follow. The concept was almost disarmingly simple: give creative people access to every Criterion release and let them talk.
The result became Closet Picks, a series that has grown into one of the internet’s most beloved archives of creative influence.
Since then, hundreds of guests have stepped inside the Closet, from Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon Ho and Barry Jenkins to Cate Blanchett, Bill Hader, Charli XCX, Ayo Edebiri, Willem Dafoe and countless others. Each episode follows the same format. Guests browse the shelves, discover forgotten favorites, laugh at unexpected memories and explain why particular films continue to matter to them.
The brilliance of the series lies in what it refuses to do.
Unlike traditional celebrity interviews, the Closet rarely focuses on the project someone is promoting. Instead, it asks a more revealing question without ever saying it out loud: What inspires you?
A filmmaker’s favorite movies often reveal more than an interview about their latest release ever could. Every film they reach for becomes a memory, an influence or a creative turning point. The Closet transforms taste into autobiography, allowing audiences to understand artists through the work that shaped them rather than the work they are selling.
That authenticity is precisely what makes the series so compelling.
In an era dominated by algorithms that recommend content based on previous viewing habits, the Criterion Closet celebrates human recommendation. Every episode reminds viewers that cinema has always been passed from one person to another through conversation, enthusiasm and shared discovery. A director recommending an overlooked Japanese drama or a musician introducing audiences to an obscure documentary feels less like marketing and more like receiving a personal invitation into someone else’s creative world.
The series has also become one of the smartest examples of brand building in modern culture.
Criterion never changed its identity to reach younger audiences. It did not chase trends or reinvent itself for social media. Instead, it found a way to communicate the values it had always believed in through a format that felt personal, accessible and endlessly shareable. Every Closet video reinforces the same message without ever needing to say it directly: cinema matters, curiosity matters and the films that shape us deserve to be revisited.
It is marketing that almost never feels like marketing.
The impact extends far beyond the videos themselves. A single appearance can revive interest in forgotten classics, introduce younger viewers to directors they have never encountered or send collectors searching for long overlooked releases. Entire watchlists have been built from Closet recommendations alone. What begins as one person’s enthusiasm often becomes thousands of new discoveries.
As the series grew, so did the mythology surrounding the room itself. What was originally an employee stockroom gradually became a destination. For Criterion’s fortieth anniversary, the company introduced the Criterion Mobile Closet, a traveling version that allowed audiences around the United States to experience the space for themselves. Fans lined up not to meet celebrities, but simply for the chance to browse the shelves and briefly inhabit a place that had become synonymous with cinematic discovery.
Few brands manage to create a physical space that carries genuine cultural meaning. The Criterion Closet has accomplished exactly that.
Its influence reaches beyond film. Designers admire its visual identity. Writers study its conversations. Fashion creatives, musicians and artists frequently reference the series because it demonstrates something increasingly rare online: taste expressed without performance. Guests are not trying to appear intellectual or prove their knowledge. They are simply sharing the films they love, and that honesty resonates far beyond cinema.
Perhaps that is why the Closet continues to endure.
It reminds us that influence is not built solely through originality, but through the willingness to acknowledge those who came before us. Every shelf represents decades of filmmaking, and every guest becomes another link in that chain, connecting audiences to stories they may never have discovered otherwise.
The Criterion Closet is ultimately about more than movies. It is about memory, influence and curiosity. It celebrates the idea that every creative life is shaped by the work of others, and that sometimes the most revealing portrait of an artist is not found in their own work, but in the films they cannot leave behind.
What began as a quiet room inside an office has become one of cinema’s most meaningful cultural spaces, proving that great taste, when shared sincerely, can become a story of its own.
