Asif Kapadia Quotes

I think films have to reach people and really grab them. That's what I hope to do when I make a film - to get under your skin and really make you think about something, and have a transporting time that takes you somewhere.

The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.

Whatever films I make, the mandate is that it should touch the audiences and engage them from the first scene.

A film should be an experience. You should feel something. It should motivate you to feel something.

I want to create films that will speak to different parts of our hearts and brains, stories told from a different angle.

At heart, we believe that the films that work well are the films that do touch people emotionally.

I think a film is a failure if it doesn't have an emotional effect. That's the film's failure. Not if it doesn't deliver a message, but if it doesn't have emotional effect or visceral effect.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

When people leave the theatre, they should remember a line, a character, a sequence or emotion. With entertainment, I want to give meaningful cinema.

I want to do stories that really move me, that have an audience, and at the end of the day, I want people to feel something when they walk out of the cinema.

A film sells feelings.

Early on, many years ago when we started 'Avatar,' the executive that we were working with said to make the sad scenes sadder, the funny scenes funnier, the scary scenes scarier. That was kind of permission to do what we felt comfortable with.

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

I know when I go to a movie I want to experience something, whether to laugh, to cry, to feel bad.

I love that you can watch a film and 10 years later still be affected.

You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.

I want to move people, stir something within them that makes them feel. That's what a movie should do and an actor should do, make you feel something. I think that's why people love films so much.

When I am shooting, I am inside the theatre, when I am in the editing room, I am inside the theatre. I always try to feel what they will feel. I see a film, not as a director, but as the audience. If I am entertained, they will be, too.

I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that?

We all do that thing which is the best in movies - we relate.

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

I wanted to make people feel the same way I feel when I see a good movie.

If you don't have something that glues the audience to the screen, you're in trouble.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

When I worked on 2001 - which was my first feature film - I was deeply and permanently affected by the notion that a movie could be like a first-person experience.