Shunji Iwai

“I like analogue things more than plastic things. But as for picture quality, 35 mm is just half the size it can be, which is an issue for me.”

Kim Ki-duk

“I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree.”

Jia Zhangke

“I believe that it doesn't really matter how large an audience my film gets; as long as my films can be shown in China, and there can be any kind of real market for them here, that would be hugely significant for me personally.”

Sion Sono

Satyajit Ray

“What is attempted in these films is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.”

Richard Linklater

“I've always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists. ”

Alfred Hitchcock

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.”

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.”

Andrei Tarkovsky

“Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.”

Ang Lee

“Things are being simplified a lot for us lately. I think people are hungry for something that shows more respect for the complexity of life, the depth, the grey areas.”

Gus Van Sant

“I have my ideas of what a good documentary is, but drama is a different animal because you're arranging everything.”

Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”

Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

David Lynch

“I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.”

Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”