Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

Many people have this memory of traditional TV documentary-making that aims to portray pure reality, and I just don't see that as the only option.

I have major credibility as a hip, out-there documentary filmmaker, and I'm not going to say, 'I'm only a drama filmmaker' anymore.

As far as the balance between being a journalist, being an artist, being a storyteller - documentary filmmakers are all three of those things. The balance between them is affected by the film itself, the topic of the film.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

In my early career as a documentarian, I suppose I was trying to make films which - where it was all about making a big cinematic statement, and I think with 'Marley,' I slightly changed my direction and adopted a more mellow approach.

When I'm filming a documentary, I feel like I should be the straight man, watching with a raised eyebrow.

I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps.

It's such a rich experience when you enter into a subject from a documentary point of view. It's hard for fiction to compete with that.

But one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made.

The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was 'Waltz With Bashir,' or 'The Gatekeepers,' or '5 Broken Cameras.'

My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.

I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

We set out to capture what was happening, and then we cut that into the series.

A documentary film is a great way of helping people understand because, somehow, when one is able to see the people involved, it lends a certain immediacy and understanding that is hard to get on the page.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

With documentaries, what's beautiful about them is that you capture something unique in a shot, something that will never repeat itself.

I'm not trying to acquire a reputation as serious documentary maker for its own sake.

The only obligation you have as a film-maker is to tell your version of the truth and to use your film to illuminate reality. Whatever that means.

I always thought that life is full of stories and characters that feel like literary stories and characters. So when I started making documentaries, they weren't humble empirical things, just following people around. I was always trying to impose a story.

For me, filmmaking is not about making statements but about exposing human behavior so people are eager enough to start thinking on their own and make their own assumptions.

For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

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.'

When I shoot a film, I take my camera and put it among the characters and let it show you their world, their problems, their happiness and the little things that matter to them.

We can use films and art to express what is happening around all of us.