While he ed us back in September 2014, it wasn’t until January 2017 that Darren Carver-Balsiger began reviewing films consistently on the platform. Since then, it’s been a steady path up the popularity charts, amassing over 13,000 followers thanks to his thoughtful analyses, wide variety of personal and community lists, and his full embrace of the social aspects of Letterboxd. Darren describes himself as “a pessimist in life but an optimist regarding films” and he has found a comfortable home here for everything he wants out of a communal film experience online.

A 26-year-old software engineer from Leeds, England, Darren chats with fellow list-maker extraordinaire Jack Moulton about how the Letterboxd community has helped him discover obscure gems that aren’t likely to appear on the IMDb Top 250 any time soon. He also gives tips for other on how to build their own relationship with the welcoming Letterboxd community, and what it takes to curate exceptional lists of all shapes and sizes.

Let’s start at the beginning with how you ed Letterboxd. What was your ‘no-turning-back’ moment?
Darren Carver-Balsiger: My memory of ing Letterboxd goes back to when I first heard it mentioned by a YouTuber named in January 2017, when I decided to challenge myself to review every film I watched. I expected that to last just a few months, as a distraction from the exams I was revising for at the time, but over four years later I haven’t stopped reviewing.

What was the film that turned you onto cinema? And which was your gateway drug into the arthouse?
None of my family particularly care for film and I didn’t really watch a lot of film or television as a child. However, as a teenager I began to explore the medium in my spare time. The first films to really make me reconsider what cinema could be were Memento, which taught me that movies can have any structure, Pan’s Labyrinth, which pushed me past the ‘one-inch barrier’, and Grave of the Fireflies, which taught me to not be ashamed of crying at a movie. I have a distinct memory of ugly crying to Grave of the Fireflies when I was fifteen or so, when my parents were out for the day. It changed my life.

As for arthouse cinema, the one which flipped a switch in my brain to make me go “art cinema is for me” was Ingmar Bergman’s incomparable and enigmatic Persona. I had seen art films before, but I had just watched them because they were part of the ‘canon’. I stumbled across Persona on Amazon Prime, with no clue of its status in cinema history. Every second of it blew my mind and rewired what I thought cinema could be.

Your follower count has been a runaway train recently, quadrupling in the last two years. When did you notice your growing in popularity and how did you ride the momentum? (No need to be coy, we see you tracing your journey from 300 to 400 followers.)
I had almost no growth for many years. It all became exponential very fast. I’m grateful to have anyone follow me, because I just started my Letterboxd to post for myself. Most of the lists important to me predate a lot of my followers.

For me at least, the way to grow in popularity is just about consistency and keeping a dialogue with people. I post a review every day, I update lists all the time, I respond to every single comment on my posts. Letterboxd is a social site, so the best way to get noticed by the community is to give back to the community. I like keeping lists open and malleable, so they don’t just belong to me. I like having comment sections open, so I am not hiding myself from anyone and can be confronted when someone has a disagreement. I don’t know the exact reasons why anyone follows me, but I think being a constant presence helps.

What is your advice for anyone inspired to curate an ‘official’ list? Can you give us the absolute dos and don’ts?
The most simple do is: lay out very clear rules and take as much out of your control as possible. Picking out a rating limit and a clear definition of what is eligible is paramount. From there, you no longer need to care about what films belong on the list, just stick to your criteria and list the films with the highest average rating.

As for don’ts, I suppose don’t choose a topic you can’t easily maintain. For example, it would be difficult to maintain a list of top gangster movies, since there are no [genre] tags to help you track all gangster films on Letterboxd, so the criteria would be open to interpretation and even once you found them all you would have to keep on checking new releases.

With polls and surveys, the best way to conduct them is to keep them simple and inclusive. Fancy points systems are confusing and put people off from voting or make them vote tactically. Simplicity allowed me to get hundreds of votes on my sci-fi poll for example, because it was just about listing ten films and there were no rules as to what counted.

Your themed lists are some of the most popular on the site. What’s the secret to your simple and poetic titles?
I don’t think there is any secret to list titles, they just have to sound cool. Sometimes I pick out a phrase that I like, such as Werner Herzog’s “ecstatic truth”. Generally, list titles derive from phrases I think of when writing reviews. I’ll be writing, then pause and think ‘hmmm, there are other movies which would match that phrase’. That was how High Art Genre Movies, The City is a Character and Two Lost Souls Find Comfort came to be.

Because my titles are vague, I feel like the first five films need to be really representative of the list. I try to not always put the most mainstream options, but the ones which most represent the list. Trying to ensure some smaller, older and foreign films appear in those first five makes it clear that this isn’t going to just be a list of twenty movies that came out from A24 in the past few years, or anything else so limited.

I think The World is Hell: Hopeless Cinema is a good example of carefully picking a first five. They are all pessimistic to varying degrees, with a mixture of films most Letterboxd s recognize, such as mother! and First Reformed, and films which are deeper cuts but match the list theme perfectly, like Sátántangó and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.

What’s your biggest personal disagreement with any Letterboxd consensus?
Time for hot takes. One of my biggest disagreements is that I don’t really consider the Before trilogy that great. They’re fine, but I don’t find them naturalistic or charming. Other quickfire disagreements would be that I found Arrival slightly irritating, I think The Thin Red Line is one of Terrence Malick’s worst, and most of Makoto Shinkai’s filmography is unbearable for me.

As for underrated, I adore Wong Kar-wai’s lesser-praised works—Nicolas Winding Refn make uber-violent masterpieces that aren’t appreciated enough.

If people want to avoid a certain style of writing, just block people who write that way. I know people have blocked me to stop my lists appearing in the popular lists section, and that’s fine. Do whatever to make Letterboxd work best for you. I haven’t blocked anyone, because I’m happy to read whatever I see.

Whenever you hit a follower benchmark, you immediately go to the community to request recommendations. What have been your best discoveries through this project?
Asking for picks from the community has made me discover a lot of films. I have a whole list just to collect recommendations. The best films I watched through my follower benchmark polls are A Brighter Summer Day, Yi Yi, Ikiru, The Battle of Algiers, and Beau Travail. My favourite movies list is now cluttered with things that I first discovered through Letterboxd. It contains over 200 films that I only watched after ing. Without the site, my movie taste would be much more boring.

Through those invitations, you also regularly celebrate the you and who you back. Can you narrow down that list to three essential writers we should be following?
It is very hard to pick just three when I follow so many talented people. For me, BrandonHabes is the greatest writer on Letterboxd, as his reviews are always so analytical and well-researched. He explores cinema one director at a time and I love that approach, because he can examine an entire filmmaker or movement so thoroughly.

Samcrom, who writes incredibly profound and in-depth reviews. I don’t even know how he manages to think of such beautiful and meaningful sentences to describe the films he writes about.