Mike Leigh Quotes

I think bad movies are made around the world, not just in Hollywood. There are as many bad art films in the whole world as there are bad commercial films.

If African film makers had one-tenth the amount commanded by film makers the world over - even the amount used by so-called shoestring film makers - I think we would see quite an explosion of African films on the world scene.

The select group of people who do make realistic cinema, who do make cinema perhaps a little more acceptable to the Western audience, is a very small percentage.

The box office has become global. I think that factors in to the question of how to portray different ethnicities and cultures.

The world distribution of French movies is a laughing matter. That is a fact.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.

I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.

Well, I am from India and I wanted to make films in English for the international market in India. So that was really the main thing, and then of course economically it was cheaper to make films in India.

It's not easy for Chinese actors to do foreign films, and it's not easy for foreign actors to do Chinese films.

I don't think Hollywood makes many good films anymore. How many directors can you really trust to have an artistic vision, not a corporate vision or a watered-down communal one?

Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.

There's so many films from around the world, I emphasize, that are so beautifully photographed, but they don't get the recognition.

So many people from the West are coming into India, all the studios have come into India, and they're making films here, whether that's Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, everyone. That stands as testament for us, so why are we afraid of sharing our talent with the world? We must.

I'm a European, and I live there. I work in European films, and then once in a while, I make an American movie.

I want to make films with a broad scope; produced in Italy but looking at the world.

The web offers a creative climate that filmmakers have been craving for.

I think there's so much talent in Latin America - you know, directors from Mexico and Chile and Colombia - we have so much talent and there are not enough platforms to show our talents, so I'd love to use this and start creating my own endeavors and get all these really talented people together.

You don't necessarily need Bollywood for wider acclaim.

I actually really love British and European cinema, but you have to go where the work is, and for me, it's in America.

Films are made all over the world all the time and only a thin slice of that product is Hollywood.

I never make a distinction between doing a film in Hollywood or doing a film independently. It's just the story. It's always the story for me. The constants are that it should challenge me and I shouldn't repeat myself. And the story should always be a story worth telling.

Culture - art, music, literature - is the long game, because it's the way to change people's ideas in a more personal way.

I think it's really important that we have diversity - whether it's different languages, cultures - be involved in film and in the arts.

Doing any kind of culture in America in which you are not trying to affirm a European aesthetic is war.