Mike Mills

“Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about. And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you.”

Sean Durkin

Nicolas Winding Refn

“Art is an act of violence.”

David Yates

“I like to create an atmosphere where actors feel safe enough to take risks. I certainly don't believe in being a macho bully; I'm not interested in frightening good work out of people. It's bollocks.”

Terrence Malick

“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”

David Cronenberg

“Anybody who comes to the cinema is bringing their whole sexual history, their literary history, their movie literacy, their culture, their language, their religion, whatever they've got. I can't possibly manipulate all of that, nor do I want to.”

Michael Haneke

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

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.”

Neill Blomkamp

“Once the budgets get bigger, you can’t do what you want as a director, unless you’re Peter Jackson or James Cameron.”

Maya Deren

“The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls.”

Duncan Jones

“The films that I loved growing up were the science fiction films from the late seventies and early eighties, which were more about the people and how they are affected by the environments that they are in. ”

Anton Corbijn

“I don't like a very fast film; I wanted a film where there would be time for someone to walk through a room because I like movement by people.”

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.”

Chris Marker

“Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.”

Lee Daniels

Judd Apatow

“It's so difficult to shock America these days.”

Elia Kazan

“I like directors who come on the set and create something that’s a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.”

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.”

Víctor Erice

“I think that among the arts, cinema is the least known. Its history is generally ignored, and so is, above all, its real nature. As cinema is the most secret of all artistic languages, it is also the least understood.”

Ousmane Sembène

“I am really unable to talk about my life – I don’t know my life. I’ve travelled a lot and this is the life that I have lived, but that doesn’t mean that I know myself.”