Theodoros Angelopoulos

“Prizes are prizes, but I still need to tell that story. And being simple is the hardest thing.”

Aki Kaurismäki

“Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!”

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.”

Emir Kusturica

“What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in…”

Roman Polanski

“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”

Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

Marjane Satrapi

“The real war is not between the West and the East. The real war is between intelligent and stupid people.”

Tim Burton

“I've always loved the idea of fairy tales, but somehow I never managed to completely connect with them. What interests me is taking those classic images and themes and trying to contemporize them a bit. I believe folk tales and fairy tales have some sort of psychological foundation that makes that possible.”

Derviş Zaim

Majid Majidi

“The government has a monopoly on film stock and equipment, so every filmmaker has to go to them to rent these items. The government issues screening permits for the films, which means they can ban a film or demand changes in it. They also rate them on artistic and cultural merits. They reward A-grade films with rights to advertise on the government controlled media and screenings at the best theaters while C-grade filmmakers can be kept from making films for a year.”

Pedro Almodóvar

“I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.”

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.”

Wim Wenders

“Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making. ”

Abbas Kiarostami

“But in all, I don't like to engage in telling stories. I don't like to arouse the viewer emotionally or give him advice. I don't like to belittle him or burden him with a sense of guilt. These are the things I don't like in the movies.”

Jim Jarmusch

“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”

Tony Gatlif

“At the time, it was useless to use words to make the case for the gypsies, so I used music as the key.”