Global Film Market Quotes

Cinema is capitalism in its purest form.... There is only one solution - turn one's back on American cinema.

I actually really love British and European cinema, but you have to go where the work is, and for me, it's in America.

Hollywood cools, and when it cools you have to go to where the work is. I ran off to Italy to do spaghetti westerns.

But now I wish I could back to Stockholm to make international films there.

I believe, the Japanese film industry must be open.

At this moment, everyone is in crisis, not only in Italy but all over Europe. Only in America do they make films that are successful all over the world. In Europe, production is quite poor. We have three or four or five films, which is not enough.

The foreign audiences are somewhat surprised and happy to find an American film that asks questions about American culture. There's a certain kind of cultural imperialism that we practice. Our films penetrate every market in the world. I have seen and have had people reflect to me, maybe not in so many words or specifically, but I get the subtext of it - they're somewhat charmed and surprised and happy to see an American film reflect on our culture. Because they see other cultures reflect on our culture but they don't see US culture reflecting on itself in quite the same way.

People talk about Hollywood as a myth, but in reality, when you make Icelandic movies and you want to get them distributed in the U.S., you're not really working with Hollywood. The movies I've been making, the first one I made, I made it with Working Title, but it was financed through Universal, so it became a Hollywood production.

The American films just have so much more publicity and so much more money behind them that it's so hard to compete.

For me, trying to expand the energy to make one movie in Hollywood would be the equivalent in terms of energy to making 10 movies in Japan.