Andrew Haigh

“Films are so over-edited nowadays. Nobody gives things the space to just exist. You don’t need to be chopping back and forwards. People like Antonioni were happy to just let things exist.”

Romuald Karmakar

Jacques Tourneur

“I look for very strong visual unity by using a type of framing and camera movement that is very simple. Everything must come from inside. It mustn’t be superficial. I hate weird camera angles and distorting lenses.”

João Pedro Rodrigues

“Although I went to film school, I learned how to make films mostly by watching other films.”

Aki Kaurismäki

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

Wong Kar-wai

“Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it's the way we can survive and make the films. We can work with the things that we get, but not the things we wish we had.”

Fatih Akin

“The funnier it is in the beginning of a story, the more dramatic it can become. Because when an audience is laughing, that's opening their souls somehow, and when you have an audience with an open soul, it's much better to hit them with a knife.”

Vincente Minnelli

“I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work. ”

Tran Anh Hung

“I adore American painting, German music, Japanese cinema and literature, Vietnamese contemporary work and Italian cuisine.”

Jafar Panahi

“In a world where films are made with millions of dollars, we made a film about a little girl who wants to buy a fish for less than a dollar.”

Preston Sturges

“The most incredible thing about my career is that I had one.”

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.”

Hong Sang-soo

“When I finish a film, I feel like I have overcome a certain hurdle. It's really good for me as a human being, and I hope that for some people, my films will do the same thing.”

Jesper Ganslandt

“You have to be able to portray guys as human beings.”

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.”

Robert Aldrich

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

Billy Wilder

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

Christian Petzold

“I always like it when people play something, when they believe that they have to play the role of father or daughter, but then they lose control over the staging. Those are the best moments.”

Shirin Neshat

“My only advice is to spend less time on thinking about success and put all the energy in making art itself. Otherwise your relationship to your art changes. It becomes less genuine and honest. Art should not be born from a pressure of becoming successful but something deeper. This is always a danger and the cause for mediocrity in art.”

Jessica Hausner