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.”

Claire Denis

“Even if it's the dream of a voyage, I think it was very important for me that the film offer the two sides of the globe.”

Raj Kapoor

“Our people are gracious and kind. They go to all the trouble to go to a cinema, stand in long queues and procure a ticket. They go through the hustle and bustle, through the blazing sun and the thrashing rain, to see your film, and; as I have always said - if you do not cheat the audience, they are very kind to you. Don't make a fool of them. Do not take them for granted. They may not be as intelligent or as critical as other audiences, but why they have come there, they know: they want to be entertained.”

Steven Soderbergh

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

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.”

Carl Theodor Dreyer

“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.”

Satyajit Ray

“What is attempted in these films is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.”

Raya Martin

“When you see Filipino films in general they are devoid of humour. I guess it’s reflective of the effects of history and we try to laugh everything off but deep down inside it’s a history of sadness.”

Maurice Tourneur

“Show the people anything, but show them something. This can be either funny or dramatic, but there must be something.”

Ferdinand Zecca

Raoul Walsh

“There is probably no moment in picturemaking that is more acutely essential to a director’s success than the instant of his choice of story material. For the director, that is the moment of conception.”

James Gray

“What I’m after, making a film, is the most exact transcript of my most intimate impressions of behavior”

Johnnie To

“Hollywood can't do this. But we can: we can change things whenever we want.”

Béla Tarr

“I think censorship is always there. Then it was the censorship of the state and now it's the censorship of the market.”

Aleksandr Sokurov

“The surface of the screen and that of the canvas are one and the same.”

Josef von Sternberg

“I care nothing about the story, only how it is photographed and presented.”

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.”

Samuel Fuller

“Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.”

Max Ophüls

“Paris, which had always amused me on holiday, was too lovely… Emigration was no hardship, it was an outing. It offered the shining wet boulevards under the street lights, breakfast in Monmartre with cognac in your glass, coffee and lukewarm brioche, gigolos and prostitutes at night… Everyone in the world has two fatherlands: his own and Paris.”

King Vidor

“My luck was my father not striking oil... we'd have been rich. I'd never have set out for Hollywood with my camera, and I'd have had a lot less interesting life.”