Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.

Instead of being with my family, I was spending a lot of time trying to start all over again, from zero, in another country. I couldn't take it anymore, so I went back to Mexico and said, 'I'm gonna do my own stuff.' So, I did my movie that I was trying to do for many, many years, called 'Instructions Not Included.'

When I made my first film, it was just an adventure. But after my first movie, I guess I got more of a feeling of what was happening around me.

In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

I didn't realize how interesting the place I come from is until I left home and saw how other cultures handled things differently.

I was raised in an Indian household - singing classical music and eating south Indian food. But the second I went to school, it was a different world. I'd be listening to Destiny's Child, Usher and the Backstreet Boys. It wasn't until college that I really found the balance between the two worlds.

When you go to college you can just be whoever you wanna be. So I got there and I'm like, Yeah, I'ma rapper.

I think I am more liberated as an artiste in my late 40s.

To be able to come back to Nigeria and get so much love for my work is my biggest life blessing. I've always hoped to never get lost in translation with me being British-born.

I feel like, Estonia, the sky is so low, and the people are much more close-minded than in America. So when I came to the U.S., I had a massive explosion of creativity and felt like I could do basically anything I want.

Like the ancient Silk Road itself, 'The Sound of Silk' will make the foreign familiar while challenging long-held notions of identity and our place in the world.

Moviemaking is a dirty, tiring affair. The joy comes from the possibility to be free on set and really let loose.

What you write sets the visual style for the film. But you have to compromise your style in your first few films before people let you do what you want to do.

It feels good to create, and to actually have input, and your choices are your choices.

After working on 'Europa,' I found it incredibly freeing to speak English in a film, so it kind of sparked an interest in me as an artist to improve my acting.

Getting expelled from secondary school and going to a more arty-farty college gave me the incentive to perform and opened some doors.

I wanted to do something raw and raucous and R-rated. But then 'Middle School: the Worst Years of My Life' came to me. One reason I took this movie on is because I saw it as a really great opportunity to revisit my own past through this character.

For me, working alone is being able to express, which is the artistic part.

I saw an early cut of 'The Disaster Artist,' and I thought it was inspiring in a lot of ways, and it made me realize it had been so long since I had tried to make a film or to try to - you know, the book was obviously my first kind of big creative pursuit I had control over.

Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.

All of my experiences modeling, acting, doing theater, it's all in the work now. And the work freed me to transform myself.

At school, I was basically a loner, it was hard until I was 15 or so. Then I went to art school and was gifted with freedom to do the things I really wanted to do.

Wherever the wind blows me, I'll go! My eventual goal is to have enough experience to produce something on my own.

I always felt like an outsider of the industry, and now I feel quite comfortable as an independent artist.

A lot of people tend to get intimidated by looking at a place where they're from as empty. I look at it like a clean slate.