Jasmila Zbanic Quotes

When you're making a film, you become incredibly close. It's not like you're filing away papers all day. You're creating with human emotions, so you do become very connected, so it is familial and romantic.

I love writing books, but it's a solitary experience. When I'm on a film set, I'm with a bunch of other artists working together to make one thing.

Filmmaking is hard. I mean, it's not that hard, but it is hard to find your way through a system because there's a lot of people, there's money, there's a big machine to kind of make it - and how to find methods and processes that allow it to continue to be a lively process and a creative process.

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with. My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something. It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I have no interest in writing, directing or producing.

The reason I wanted to start directing is that as an actor I felt I came into a job late. There's a whole team of people who have been working on it for months before you start. You have this really intense period of filming and then you leave it, knowing that the director will work on it for another few months.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.

I love writing. I think writing and directing go hand in hand.

I've been writing and wanting to direct for a long time.

I think of making a movie in such a romantic way.

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

Filmmaking is such a collaborative medium.

I always loved the creative process, from 'Shakespeare in Love' to 'Finding Neverland' to 'Basquiat'; whether it's serious, or it's comedic, whether it's the 'inside look' at that, it seems to be a theme of what I do.

I truly believe that cinema is a collaborative effort, and as long as I get to tell, and be part of, interesting stories and work with genuine people, I don't see any project as a 'risk.'

I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it.

I make films about stories that I get interested in.

When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

I've always endeavored to make movies with my friends.

Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it — or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.

I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker... But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.

I think writing is the most underrated thing in Hollywood.

Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.

You have to listen to the movie while you're making it. I think that's important.

When you make a film, it's a bet. You don't know how the film is going to be, anyway.