For most people, media provides a concrete touchstone to periods in their life. It can be a song reminding you of an old flame, old cartoons inflaming nostalgia for a more innocent time, or even whimsical picture books that recall the safety and warmth of a childhood bed. In my own life, that touchstone has always been film. Although labeled a bookworm by my parents through their own projection of intellectual hopes onto a child whom simply enjoyed a good bedtime story, film was always the medium that felt inextricably tied to my own life. The beginning of my memories begins with Toy Story 2, cementing in the almost paradoxical ideas that friendship was something to be treasured above all else but also that everyone I ever loved would be forced to leave me one day. Coming of the age of reason was not an event marked by Catholic dogma informing me of my newfound ethical responsibility, or even the start of my formal schooling, but rather an accidental viewing of The Silence of the Lambs that forever traumatized me. Pubescence was marked by seeing 500 Days of Summer and seeing that Zooey Deschanel was no longer just charming and quirky, but she now suddenly had a new charm that flew under the radar of my pre-pubescent mind: she was attractive. I could chart my periods of teenage angst through a penchant for stark color palettes and a newly minted appreciation for subtitles. When I was 15, Woody Allen taught me it was okay to be anxious and that relationships will always be terribly complicated. When I was 16, Bergman showed me that asking questions is the only way to grow. The story of my life is not just my own, but the collective of the others’ stories, to which I am eternally grateful for making me who I am today.