Lee Chang-dong

“There’s no question that ‘Green Fish’ and ‘Peppermint Candy’ draw on the political and economic problems of Korea. But they weren’t my main focus. My main interest has always been human beings. I believe film is the best medium to show something about human beings.”

Kelly Reichardt

“I like working in a really private way. I mean, we got as far as a cut of [Old Joy] without speaking to any kind of lawyer or anything. We got into Sundance before we thought we should form a company. Aside from a lot of sound work and stuff still to go, it was all very private, and that’s a dream for me.”

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.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini

“The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life.”

Gregg Araki

“I couldn’t make movies like this if I started to worry about what Jerry Falwell is going to have to say about it.”

Yôji Yamada

Shin'ya Tsukamoto

“It’s strange. Part of me loves a city like Tokyo, but part of me would quite happily destroy it.”

Roberto Rossellini

“I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.”

Takashi Miike

“I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist.”

Eric Khoo

“The suppression in Singapore and Asia in general works for me. It’s one of the reasons why, after I graduated from L.A., I moved back to Singapore — because for me art is always about pushing boundaries or testing the limits and making people see things differently. It’s actually fuel for my creativity.”

Jules Dassin

“If there is anything I want to be remembered for, it is for fulfilling Melina's dream [the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece].”

Teinosuke Kinugasa

Mikio Naruse

“From the youngest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me.”

Olivier Assayas

“With Irma Vep, all of a sudden I decided that it was okay to mix genre, to mix cultures, and that movies sometimes could be experiments, that within the format of modern cinema, within the format of narrative, you could experiment by mixing elements.”

Roy Andersson

“I felt that film-making generally didn't reach the level you could find in painting or literature or music. It was for one-time use only, and more and more, the movies were losing their visual power - they were concentrating on the plot only. That's why I started wanting to be a film director myself. It wasn't only the plot that was interesting; it was the touch, the feeling, something visually rich.”

Masahiro Shinoda

“It is much more fun to look at evil than to look at good!”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

“Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.”

Seijun Suzuki

“I was never rebellious, I was just mischievous!”

Kon Ichikawa

“I don't have any unifying theme - I just make any picture I like or that my company tells me to do.”

Louis Malle

“You must find the note, the correct key, for your story. If you find it, everything will work. If you do not, everything will stick out like elbows.”