Michael Glawogger

“Every documentary is staged to some degree. It’s all a matter of finding the right degree.”

Steve McQueen

“My influences come from real life. I’m not interested in cinema for cinema’s sake. I’m interested in life—what one does and how one interacts.”

Taika Waititi

Safi Faye

“I think it is important that there are women filmmakers and it is a pity that film work is so hard and that many African women don’t get involved in it. Women should have an important role to play in African cinema, given their sensitivity and their truthfulness.”

Asghar Farhadi

Hawa Essuman

“Humans [are my biggest source of inspiration]. I love human interaction and human relationships and how we absorb stories, conversations. How we look to better ourselves. I really enjoy that and how we question ourselves. I like the questioning and the curiosity of the human mind…”

Denis Villeneuve

Bong Joon-ho

“Human beings basically express their feelings in the same way. They feel the same feelings. If you look at two foreigners talking to each other, you soon can see if they are fighting, or are in love.”

Gerardo Naranjo

Beadie Finzi

David Michôd

Ava DuVernay

Maren Ade

“To date, I have always started with a character whose inner life I investigated for some time. I am then able to extract a narrative from his or her desires, longings and fears. While still searching, I am tuned into the world around me, enjoy observing people, let myself be led by what I meet in the way of stories, people – and films, of course.”

Erick Zonca

Jane Campion

“What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.”

Tomas Alfredson

“The soundscape is fifty percent of the experience. Any kid can nowadays easily point out where and how you’ve made certain visual effects, but very rarely what they’ve experienced with their ears. This is still an enormous orchestra to conduct, which is in the dark for the audience.”

Andrea Arnold

“Dramatically, I like darkness, I like conflict - but I don't see the world as defined by them. And why would I pretend to? That's not who I am.”

Michael Haneke

“Every film is manipulative, raping the viewer. So the question is: Why do I rape the viewer?”

Tom Tykwer

“You have to be clear about the characters in the beginning and then you just go for it, but in Winter Sleepers it was really a different approach. You get to know somebody, then maybe at first sight you don't like him. In real life that very often happens”

Werner Herzog

“It is my duty to direct because the films might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”