Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

Some artists want to confront. Some want to invoke thought. They're all necessary and they're all valid.

I do not make movies to send any message, but my treatment makes my viewers think on the subject.

Look, I'm just a storyteller. When I make a film, I never want the film to become a vehicle of social propaganda.

I'm interested in making films that make people think.

Comics could use more creators with something worthwhile to say.

The reason you work as an artist is to stay open and ask questions.

I think that's always the goal of art, is to make people ask themselves questions.

You can make a film in a way that, when the audience leaves the theater, they leave with certain answers in their head. But when you leave them with answers, you interrupt the process of thinking. If, instead, you raise questions about the themes and the story, this means that the audience is on its way to start thinking.

As a political artist, I think you have to learn how to create art, no matter what your ideology is.

My films are like drinking a good beer, but pleasure doesn't mean that it cannot change someone's point of view.

What a terrible world it would be if we only did films that were poster boards for political causes.

I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.

In a sense, I think a movie is really a little like a question and when you make it, that's when you get the answer.

Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.

Film is the only language I speak, and I have been lucky to be involved in some great stories. You don't want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.

It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say, but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda, even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films, something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.

I'm not a politician; I'm lucky to be a filmmaker and to be able to express myself through the films I make.

The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.

A film has its own life and takes its own time.

The cinema is there to heighten the imagination; I have always tried to make sure it does so.

I hope this doesn't sound pretentious, but I very often like the way Europeans make movies. I think sometimes that don't they care about having to clean certain things.

The more tools we have directors and cinematographers will be able to express more and create different worlds and feelings. It's like having more instruments in an orchestra.

Not just art for art's sake, but I want to have films out there that will provoke authentic, holistic conversations about the human condition. And not provide the easy answers, but put it out there.

'No words - action' was the lesson my mother taught me: as artists, we have the privilege of holding a mirror to the world, to engage, to question, to bring beauty to a complex universe.

If you have something to say, a movie is a really great medium to say it. It doesn't matter what the message is.