The cinema should be human and be part of people's lives; it should focus on ordinary existences in sometimes extraordinary situations and places. That is what really motivates me.
Claire Denis
I long to make films. I'm dying to be inside the next film. I always hope there will be another film.
I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound. I am really a very simple person.
I always thought of Djibouti as a place where human history hasn't really begun yet - or perhaps it's already over. There's something in the landscape that's stronger than human civilisation. There's no agriculture, for example, and there are live volcanoes.
What I like is the idea of a group, even if it's just two people - the idea of solitude within a group.
When I was doing 'Beau Travail,' I listened a lot to Benjamin Britten.
Sometimes bleak is good. Sometimes bleak is necessary. Some part of life is always bleak.
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.
When you have countries that have a lot of minerals and diamonds and oil and are in business with companies from all over the world - but these companies don't share, really, their profits - this is called post-post-colonial.
The history of colonisation cannot disappear.
I don't know - music in film, for me, is not another part of a soundtrack; it is something that also helps to approach a character, to foresee the type of image - you see what I mean - it's like a part of the process.
I can't imagine a society with absolutely no solidarity. For me, it's a nightmare. And I don't want to live in a place like that.
The camera is not your eye, and it's not the eye of the audience. I don't think it's my eye, either. It belongs to the film.
For some reason, I have always been interested in the stories of people who are exiled and who are deprived of rights. My main motive to make a film is to keep the society in mind and the hospitality adhered.
Often, women as little girls are sent off on a track for them to live a perfect life and be a perfect woman. Not for boys, who can be themselves with their mood and their temper.
Marguerite Duras was a very good friend of mine and an intellectual hero. She was also a sort of mother figure. Of course she was an influence.
I think working as an assistant was a part of knowing people who like cinema, and to learn from a movie, you have to watch it.
My films are always looked at strangely, and there is nothing I can do about it.
A career for me is something like building a bridge. You know, where to put the lifts. You have a plan. I have a blueprint for each film, but not for my life.
When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not the only one to ask for that - not love, but absolute fidelity.
I think you cannot make films without choosing everything.
'Chocolat' was a sort of statement of my own childhood, recognizing I experienced something from the end of the colonial era and the beginning of independence as I was a child that really made me aware of things I never forgot - a sort of childhood that made me different when I was a student in France.
I don't think I see the way bodies move in any special way. People say I do, but everybody moves. I don't see why all of a sudden I'm a specialist in the way bodies move.
A film takes a lot of time, and yet not enough to share with the people you're making the movie with, I think.
I have very strong relationships with my actors when I'm shooting. When you love an actor's work, you always feel you have to go further, and you make several films together. One film just gives you time to get acquainted.
Life is not better and more moral than it was in the '50s. It's just the same.
I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture.
I hate family pressures and family responsibilities. I'm more comfortable as a stranger. I always imagined I could just live in a hotel. I'm afraid of family.
Shoes have a meaning.
You can spend your whole life in France without ever thinking about the Legion.
It's not that I don't like words. There's sometimes no need for words.
I always thought Vincent Lindon had a sexy body, a body you can trust, a solid body you can lean on.
I'm not a tacky person, I think.
The only thing I find interesting is self-interest.
In Kurosawa's films, the tragedy is that this strong man was crushed by corruption or mistrust at the end.
When making a film, if I feel nothing in my body, I can't work. I have to touch. I have to feel. I never stop touching.
A father who sees his daughter leave in the arms of another man does not feel the same as a mother. It is heartrending for her, too. But it is not the same.
I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.
I have no relationship to the French bourgeoisie. I don't like connecting with them.
What I don't like so much is to give explanations about people's behaviour... I'm not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, 'Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.' It doesn't work like that with me.
Africa is no more this poor continent. It's on the march.
My mother's father was from Brazil - a painter, and not a famous one - and was always broke. But he was a free spirit, a great grandfather.
Filmmaking creates a sort of - trust, maybe. It has led me to a group of people I feel good with. We have something in common because of film, when otherwise we might have nothing.
I'm not rich.
I'm not a very brave person.
I've experienced love and ambition and desire in my life, but never in the same way as in a family.
I'm not witty.
I'm a very sinister person.
I hate the victimization of women, always.
I've heard it said many times, 'Let's work on the look of the film,' but that doesn't work with me.
