Jean-Luc Godard Quotes

Peter Chelsom and Edgar Wright are totally different directors and worlds apart, but both really accomplished directors who are certain of how they want to make a film.

Mohan Raja is an interesting filmmaker. He is constantly, if I may use the word, contradicting himself. He explains a scene, and then he will try to break that and rebuild it. That, to me, is filmmaking. Every scene is constructed after a lot of discussions.

The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head.

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

I had a philosophy, which may have been proven right, that directing isn't as hard as everyone says it is.

You become the movie you are making.

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

When you're making a film, you become incredibly close. It's not like you're filing away papers all day. You're creating with human emotions, so you do become very connected, so it is familial and romantic.

I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

As a filmmaker, you have to understand the essence of the book and tell the story you want to see on the screen, and hopefully please yourself - because you can't possibly please everyone.

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.

Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.

As a director, you never think about how an audience would respond. You can think about that, but you will never change what you're going to do.

I don't make films to reproduce reality.

I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.

I think, when you're a director, you get sucked into your project whether you like it or not, right?

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

Film becomes a living organism. After awhile, it begins to tell you what it needs, and you're usually best listening.

I never control a film. The film controls me.

'The Lobster,' at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer,' which turned out to be not as accessible as 'The Lobster.' It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra is the only man I see around who makes films because he thinks 'this is a story that needs to be told, so let's tell it.'

I don't think I've succeeded in making any really good films. There are moments, scenes, whole movements that sing. It has all added up to a cinema of sorts, even though I'm still learning my art.

I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.

I think of filmmaking as a form of communication. Maybe it's also an art, but that's for somebody else to decide.

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.