Asif Kapadia Quotes

A film engages you emotionally and intellectually.

Dialogues and emotion based movies don't always work.

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.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

It doesn't matter if it's black-and-white. If a movie has a story that is filled with emotion, you can have as much pleasure, and it's very good for cinema.

As a viewer, I love watching movies. There has to be an emotional connection.

When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.

At the heart of any successful film is a powerful story. And a story should be just that: a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, powerful protagonists that audiences can identify with, and a dramatic arc that is able to capture and hold viewers' intellectual and emotional attention.

The movies that are really big, at least in my experience, oftentimes don't have characters that I feel as personally connected to.

As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director's job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction.

I've often been accused of, 'Oh the movies looked good but there's no story,' but I disagree with that in theory, and '9' is a perfect example for me because the feel, the texture, and the look of that world, and those characters, is the story. That's a major component of why you feel the way you do when you're watching it.

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

I always put myself in the audience's seat, whether it is a film like 'Judwaa 2' or 'Badlapur.' There has to be a message; the core story needs to have a hook, which should be out of the ordinary.

When I make a film, the yardstick is my mind. If I laugh at the jokes and feel sad at the serious undersides, then the subject works.

People don't come to the theatres to watch a kiss. It's the story that appeals to them.

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

We see films all the time, whether they have access to all kinds of intellectual property or artifacts, and the one thing that they don't get is story. So I think whether you're talking about a biopic or an action film or a science-fiction film that has all the CGI in the world, if you're not trying to connect with an audience, it doesn't really matter.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

Film is a very intimate medium.

As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

I think that those are the things that you can uniquely do with film that are difficult to do anywhere else: they can bring a picture to life, give it a natural and historical context and make you feel that everything else is suddenly credible.