Hirokazu Kore-eda Quotes

To me, form is not something that you can plan beforehand, especially for a documentary. You can't write it or sketch it. It requires a confrontation with reality, with history, with ethics and morals. After identifying good content, you have to find the right form to express that content.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

'The Look' is my first documentary, and I enjoyed the freedom of working within a small team.

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.

When I started my filmmaking journey 17 years ago, I honestly didn't know what a documentary film was.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

I didn't realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It's not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.

Well, like any time you're shooting documentary stuff, you've got to be in the moment, and you've got to be able to be in control enough to capture what's happening.

On 'Senna,' it got to the point where there was so much footage that our first editor had the wild suggestion that we only use the archive.

My background is sociology. Combined with my graphic approach, if I could do some film projects, I think I'd be very good at making documentaries eventually, but people don't think of me for that, of course. But dialogue is something I know I can be good at.

I love the idea of documentaries. I love seeing documentaries, and I love making them. Documentaries are incredibly easy to shoot. The ease with which you can hear something's going on, somebody's going to be somewhere: That sounds so interesting. Pick up your camera and go.

I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.

In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.

For a documentary filmmaker, I do very well.

I love documentaries. I love the format. I've been doing them for a long time.

The making of the documentary is an involving and collaborative process where you go deeper unlike in movies where you just borrow someone else's script.

I never got into making documentaries for any kind of success, because documentary careers are generally ones of prolonged failures.

There's nothing attractive about doing a documentary. Nothing. It's hard, hard work, and I find having all the attention of the day on me a very unattractive proposition.

I'm not one of those people who sees documentaries as a stepping stone to doing fiction. I love documentaries and watch tons of documentaries. But, I like fiction films a lot, too.

I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.

Some documentaries are made by people who are driven more by one particular story, or have different backgrounds or ambitions, but I'm always looking for projects that let me be the best filmmaker I can be, and to be stretched and grow further.

Reality television hasn't killed documentaries, because there are so many great documentaries still being made, but it certainly has changed the landscape. There is this breed of gimmicky documentary that is basically a reality show.

I came from a background of directing behind-the-scenes documentaries.

I don't know if I'd mastered that documentary format, but I wanted to move on from it.

There's no money in documentaries.