8½

8½ is a 1963 Italian film directed by Federico Fellini, centered on a film director experiencing creative block while attempting to begin a new production, a subject drawn closely from Fellini's own circumstances at the time. The film blends its protagonist's memories, fantasies and daily pressures into a single fluid narrative, an approach widely credited with helping establish the modern film-about-filmmaking as a genre and with influencing generations of later directors internationally. 8½ won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and later inspired the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Nine, and it continues to place highly in critics' polls of the greatest films ever made, including a top-ten finish in the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight and Sound poll.