Walter Salles Quotes

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.

'The Look' is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

One of the reasons to do documentaries is that. There's more sense of creating something, more sense of my own soul in the documentaries than in movies, because I don't write the movies I do.

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

Documentary films have always been my passion, I have done documentaries.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.

For seven years, I made films in the cinema verite tradition - photographing what was happening without manipulating it. Then I realised I wanted to make things happen for myself, through feature films.

After 'Melancholia' and 'On the Road,' I wanted to do a comedy. And I did so many comedies when I was younger, but if you're not consistently in those movies, people don't always think of you for them.

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators.

Feature filmmaking is a different kind of complication as documentary comes in the editing room.

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out.

My time in documentaries was very educating, in terms of life experience as well as the filmmaking side of it.

I don't think there's so much difference between making documentaries and feature films. I think it's even harder to make documentaries.

I just like documentaries.

I'm a documentary filmmaker, I know what it means to craft a story, especially when you've shot a lot of material.

I started as a documentary maker, and they're my first love.

I love documentaries. I love the format. I've been doing them for a long time.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

Of course, when you're making a documentary, you don't have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room.

My father did think I should get interested in television. But I had very little interest in television and it wasn't something I wanted to do. I really never thought about going to work on big feature films in Hollywood. But when we made The Householder, Columbia Pictures bought it. Who would have ever imagined?

I think I did fifteen long features and fifteen documentaries, or something like this, which is very little when you think of people making a film every year. Some people have done fifty or sixty films.