Terrence Malick

“[On Badlands (1973)] I tried to keep the 1950s to a bare minimum. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything. I wanted the picture to set up like a fairy tale, outside time, like Treasure Island. I hoped this would, among other things, take a little of the sharpness out of the violence, but still keep its dreamy quality.”

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.”

Lukas Moodysson

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

Ingmar Bergman

“Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.”

Jim Jarmusch

“I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are. ”

Ernst Lubitsch

“There are a thousand ways to point a camera, but really only one.”

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.”

Peter Hedges

Spike Jonze

“Being able to shoot on videos and commercials — just being on the set, with only a certain amount of time and shots and sequences to do in that amount of time, learning how to work with the crew the physical production and the limitations — is all good training.”

Tim Burton

“I've always loved the idea of fairy tales, but somehow I never managed to completely connect with them. What interests me is taking those classic images and themes and trying to contemporize them a bit. I believe folk tales and fairy tales have some sort of psychological foundation that makes that possible.”

Jan Švankmajer

“I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.”

Federico Fellini

“What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one...”

Nabil Ayouch

“My role as a filmmaker ends with my film. ”

Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.”

Robert Bresson

“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

Roberto Benigni

“Charlie Chaplin used his ass better than any other actor. In all his films his ass is practically the protagonist. For a comic, the ass has incredible importance.”

Baz Luhrmann

“There are successes and failures in what we’re doing, but that’s the road we’re walking down – stealing from culture all over the place to write a code so that very quickly the audience can swing from the lowest possible comedy moment to the highest possible tragedy with a bit of music in the middle.”

Paul Thomas Anderson

“I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.”

Krzysztof Kieślowski

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

David Gordon Green

“People think 'independent' means no interference. Not true. Unless you're paying for everything yourself, you're always subject to who's writing the checks.”