Lucile Hadzihalilovic

“What justifies a movie? It’s the reaction it causes in people who see it, professionals or not – the “echo” it finds in certain people. But it is obvious that the critics and the prizes help a little in the visibility of films.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Harmony Korine

“When I was a child the temptation to sin was always a romantic option. This romantic option lead me to the cinema, a place where sin was welcome.”

Ross McElwee

“Although I am always questioning whether or not my films are working as they should, although I agonize whether my persona, my voice in the films, seems authentic enough, I still feel very fortunate to have found at least some kind of a voice, and hence a way of seeing the world with my own eyes.”

Gaspar Noé

“A lot of people cry at the end of the movie. Some people come out and smoke a cigarette. Some people go for a walk or a cigarette in the middle of the movie. Each person handles the movie as he wants...”

D.A. Pennebaker

“You don’t necessarily need a script or actors to tell a compelling tale. Finding a person at a key moment in his life and rendering the truth as you see it—that’s the truest form of drama.”

Jean-Luc Godard

“A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order. ”

Henri-Georges Clouzot

“I want only to tell a story. I think movies are entertainment. If at the same time you can get across something you feel, that is perfect.”

François Truffaut

“I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.”

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.”

Akira Kurosawa

“Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied...that's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good.”

Takeshi Kitano

“Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.”

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 Maysles

“The most exciting thing in life is to watch the meeting of two strangers.”

Albert Maysles

“Documentary can requote reality I think more honestly and authentically, when done properly, than any other medium. If it is practiced properly, then it is more like photography than cinematography.”

Les Blank

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. ”

Jean Cocteau

“Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ”

Mike Leigh

“The whole thing about making films in an organic film location is that it's not all about characters, relationships and themes, it's also about place and the poetry of place. It's about the spirit of what you find, the accidents of what you stumble across”

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.”