Léos Carax

“I perceive 'Pierre' (Pola X) in the same way that I perceive my own life: I understand both 'poorly' but I’m obliged to explore them. That’s what a project is: a heavy question mark. You’re the dot under that mark and you mustn’t let it crush you.”

Buster Keaton

“I don't act anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.”

Gus Van Sant

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

Nanni Moretti

“Who doesn't speak well doesn't think well and doesn't live well! It's necessary to find the right words: words are important! ”

John Cassavetes

“The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.”

Joshua Safdie

Jacques Tati

“Like a dancer learns to dance ... a visual comic learns to use his legs.”

Philippe Garrel

“Cinema is Freud plus Lumière.”

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.”

Wim Wenders

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

Alexis Dos Santos

“I’m attracted to stories about young people and youth culture in general. ”

Jean Renoir

“A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.”

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.”

Pedro Costa

“If you don't risk yourself and the people with whom you're working in almost every shot you make, it's not good, it's useless, it's just another film.”

João Nicolau

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

“I wanted to make a fake Paris, a Paris of dreams, like in my head when I was twenty and I arrived in Paris for the first time. I wanted to avoid the bad things: traffic jams, dog shit on the street, the rain.”

Nuno Rocha

[on "Vicky and Sam"] “There are tons of movies like this, like there are tons of movies about mafia, serial killers, or ships that sinks overseas… etc, etc… But, the way you grab a concept, must be unique…”

Pierre Étaix

“There are not properly funny situations, there are only dramatic situations which cause to laugh.”

Vincent Gallo

“I constantly try to reinvent my sensibilities and my ideas. I enjoy some of the satisfaction that I get when I feel good about what I've done. But the process is quite lonely and quite painful.”

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. ”