Alexander Kluge

“We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore.”

Ken Loach

“A movie isn't a political movement, a party or even an article. It's just a film. At best it can add its voice to public outrage.”

Robert Aldrich

“A director is a ringmaster, a psychiatrist and a referee.”

Yeşim Ustaoğlu

Theodoros Angelopoulos

“Prizes are prizes, but I still need to tell that story. And being simple is the hardest thing.”

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.”

Rithy Panh

“It is symbolic for us – because the Khmer Rouge did not only kill people but they also destroyed identity and memory.”

Grigori Aleksandrov

Valentin Vaala

Mikhail Kalatozov

Werner Schroeter

“I have no intention whatsoever of playing a leading part [in the New German Cinema], and submit to the expectations of producing Kulturscheisse [literally, Cultureshit], even if it may be true that I carry around with me and into my films the past of this Kulturscheisse.”

Ere Kokkonen

Oleg Teptsov

Walter Ruttmann

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

“I, as a filmmaker, treat my works as I do my own sons or daughters. I don't care if people are fond of them or despise them, as long as I created them with my best intentions and efforts.”

Zoltán Huszárik

Ulrich Seidl

“If I manage to make people laugh with my films and their laughter gets stuck in their throat in the next moment, if I succeed in doing that, then that makes me happy.”

Semih Kaplanoğlu

Ruben Östlund

Jonas Mekas

“In Lithuania, I am known as a poet, and they don’t care about my cinema. In Europe they don’t know my poetry; in Europe, I am a filmmaker. But here, in the United States, I am only a maverick!”