Michelangelo Antonioni

“Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing.”

Wes Anderson

“I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.”

Billy Wilder

“If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”

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...”

Lars von Trier

“I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.”

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.”

Michael Bay

“Fast cars are my only vice.”

Sidney Lumet

“All great work is preparing yourself for the accident to happen.”

Steven Soderbergh

“To me the director's job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.”

Edward Yang

“I was the leader of the Taiwanese new wave. All these guys would just gather in my house, talking and laughing and drinking: Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wu Nien-jen — just about all of them. You could just push open the door. Everyone just wanted to do similar things. We weren’t allowed to, and no one was willing to give us any money to, but we shared all these idealistic thoughts.”

David Fincher

“I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.”

Park Chan-wook

“The audience seems hazy to me, shrouded in a veil through which I can't see.”

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.”

Lukas Moodysson

“I'm not particularly interested in probing the depths of my soul; I'm more into probing the world around me.”

Ruben Östlund

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.”

Jan Troell

[about working class themes] “When I look back I can see that this is a common theme in my films, but it’s not something I’m actually aware of when I’m choosing. You can see it in retrospect but not when you are doing it."

Pål Sletaune

Aaron Katz

Maren Ade

“To date, I have always started with a character whose inner life I investigated for some time. I am then able to extract a narrative from his or her desires, longings and fears. While still searching, I am tuned into the world around me, enjoy observing people, let myself be led by what I meet in the way of stories, people – and films, of course.”