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.”

Nikola Ležaić

Darren Aronofsky

“To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.”

Orson Welles

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”

Jean-Marc Barr

Dušan Makavejev

“You just see so many movies that at some point it becomes part of your life...Movies always follow us as reference material or as some kind of dreamlike material for dealing with things we don't understand in our lives. Movies give us solutions, or provide a whispering commentary on what is happening around us.”

Aleksandar Petrović

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful...it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself.”

David Lynch

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

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.”

Francis Ford Coppola

“I'm in a unique situation. I'm like now an elderly retired guy who made a lot of money, and now I can just, instead of playing golf, I can make art films.”

Stanley Kubrick

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

Michael Haneke

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

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.”

Abel Ferrara

“I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself...you're taught not to think too deeply about things.”

Samira Makhmalbaf

“As best you can, love, hope and be patient. And maybe to suffer is not bad. We must have sadness and grief because we are alive. We must endure hardness. That is the best there is. To know you are very small and life is very difficult and it is all beautiful, beautiful, beautiful… because you are alive.”

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.”

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.”

Charlie Chaplin

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

Thomas Vinterberg

“The Dogma Manifesto was a wonderful opportunity to be a team, to unite the country’s filmmakers. But we’ve all sought out other paths, we distanced ourselves from a movement that was becoming a brand, and would have ended up limiting our creativity.”