Sanjay Leela Bhansali Quotes

I don't approach films purely in context of genre.

I think of myself as a cultural filmmaker.

My responsibility is to make a film and find my dramatic language; I don't have any political or social responsibility.

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations.

I believe realism is nothing but an analysis of reality. Film scripts have a synthetical constitution.

Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.

Movies, by nature, are not subjective, they're objective.

Realism is always subjective in film. There's no such thing as cinema verite.

I'm very attracted to directors who want to experiment. The thing that attracts me the most are people who are trying find a language that is correct for their film, for that specific film.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

No film should be meaningless.

Cinema is a creative medium. The director has the right to express.

People say that my movies are violent. I do not think so.

Raman Raghav' was shot on location, but there are many stylistic things in it. I like this mixture of documentary and extreme stylization.

My 'Devdas' was a tribute to all the mainstream masters, from Mehboob Khan, K. Asif, and V. Shantaram to Raj Kapoor. I am not saying critics shouldn't have criticised my film. But they should have judged the film within the genre and format that I had chosen.

You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.

My gaze is very different from that of Ekta Kapoor's, and that is quite visible in those two films - 'Ragini MMS 2' and 'Jism 2.'

I think it's absurd to believe that movies should look like paintings and say something like serious books say something.

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

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.

Many people who have watched 'Pieta' have said my filmmaking has become more objective.

I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?'

I didn't want people to sit there and watch 10 minutes of film, and all they write about is 48 frames.

But actually I make films that I think are extremely sophisticated and cinematic.

For filmmakers who've made multiple movies, they have experience, but they only have experience of themselves as a filmmaker. Whereas I'm bouncing around from different skill sets: the organizational ability of Ridley Scott to the precision of a Ron Howard to the artistic sensibilities of a Peter Weir... to the scope of a Tom Hooper.