- I have a dreamy distance with reality, which is not a really good thing.
- Every image is about subjectivity.
- Life is made of the only thing you can decide, the rest you can not: to commit suicide or to kill someone. The rest, happens.
- The cinema gives pleasure, certainly. But most of all for me, film-making is a journey into the impossible.
- I suppose I am interested in the variety of human life - how people live. I am most interested in individuals and how they respond to challenges or to difficulties, or just to each other. I am curious about people. So that's why I do a lot of different things. 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.
- Oh, I hate post-screening Q&As! You see a film, you don't want to ask questions. All those stupid explanations!
- In life I am maybe not possessive enough. But in film - so much. I want to take my actors home with me, I get jealous when I see them act in other movies. You spend two months looking so closely at them that you can tell if a single eyelash is out of place. Then they are gone.
- I was not a stranger in France. I was raised like a French person. But my father was born and raised in Bangkok. My mother is half Brazilian. I was raised in Africa. But of course France is my country. I'm proud to be French, you know? I think it's good to recognize where you come from.
- [In 2018, age 72] Am I happy with getting older? It's a disaster. It's a wreck. To be able to stay up for three nights without sleep, to get so drunk you are in a coma - these things I miss the most. On the other hand, my body is able to move, I still have feelings and I'm making films.
- A film, during shooting and pre-production, is a sort of new era, a new relationship in my life. It's a completely different moment; I never experienced it before. Making a film happens once, not twice, so there's no experience. It's the first and only time, and it's the only time in the editing room that I can suddenly see a little bit of myself in the film.
- I guess my films are made out of tenderness and love of human beings even when they can be very brutal.
- If there are theories about me, I'd rather not know. Astrophysics - now that's fascinating. String theory, worm holes, the expanding universe, the Big Bang versus the Big Bounce - those are the kind of theories that make you feel like living and understanding the mystery of the world. Film theory is just a pain in the ass.
- Memory, time, cinema. It's the same thing, really.
- [about Africa, where she spent her childhood] When I die, if I'm conscious, these are the landscapes and faces I will remember.
- I think filmmaking is sexy. So every film is sexy for me. If a film is not sexy, it's a little bit embarrassing, you know? Even if it's very stern, even if it's "Mouchette" by Bresson, it is sexy. A film that has no relation to sex, I don't know what it is.
- In books and films there are things that move me a lot, they are life's rituals: people sharing breakfast, people taking off their shoes when they come in, people who make their beds when they get up in the morning, those who don't, those that open the window to let fresh air come in, etc. Rituals. I am always told we can't film rituals; that they are boring because they happen again and again, but specifically that's what I love.
- [advice for people who embark on a similar career] Be stubborn. That's the only thing I know. When you say 'embark,' I see someone getting on a boat, crossing the oceans, and that's what you need in your heart. You need to be sure it's really what you want in order to survive many things, the first one being fear [of being disrespected]. The respect for a female director isn't as big as for a male director. Maybe the difference is not that big, but it exists. [Venice Film Festival, 2020]
- [on her experience as an assistant director for Wim Wenders] I was very interested in his trust and the belief that film is something you have to look for. We know it costs money and it has to happen, but every morning and every night, there is a search for it. Yesterday I saw a film in the competition [The World to Come (2020)], directed by a young woman [Mona Fastvold] and I could see her shivering before the screening started. Coming to a festival, there is some glory to that. But that glory is built on millions of doubts, fear and fragility. [Venice Film Festival, 2020]
- For me, the monster is invisible. If there is a small thread running through all my work, it is that evil is never the other, everything is inside and never outside.
- [press conference for Stars at Noon (2022) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival] Denis Johnson was already very famous when I started reading his novels and his poetry, and as I was reading his works, I found in The Stars at Noon something rare......something addressing to me - my own fears, my own humiliations, my own hopes, my own despair, and I thought his dialogue was expressing that in such a crude and also delicate way that I felt I was stuck for good. And then as I was shooting High Life (2018) in Germany, he died and I thought, "Maybe I should try to translate in film this novel," as I felt so much for it. I was with Lea [Léa Mysius] first, we went to Nicaragua together, not even writing - we were scouting Denis Johnson's trajectory, actually. We went everywhere he was; all the trajectory and the geography of the novel and only after that we started writing our script, and then joined by Andy [Andrew Litvack].
- [Cannes press conference for Stars at Noon (2022)] The novel takes place during the civil war in Nicaragua, a revolution that the Sandanistas win, maybe discreetly to the world, but they do win, and therefore they were treated as a little bit dangerous by many countries and they could only communicate easily with Cuba and Venezuela. But when we were visiting Nicaragua with Léa - we got permission to shoot there - we found a location, but we realised that the President was slowly deviating from the true trajectory of the revolution and he wanted to be re-elected against the will of the people there and little by little we realised we had to change country for security reasons and also sanitary reasons when Covid started. And as we were changing and choosing Panama, to recreate the Sandanistas' civil war in Panama seemed so ridiculous, so I took the film as a piece of today. What's important in the novel is the meeting of those two characters and the civil war is the background of their meeting, as if they were in an unkind or dangerous world together finding an exit - her first and then Daniel, and they fall in love. I think this was the most important, beautiful thing in the book - the way they fall in love, the way they speak to each other as if they needed that kind of humour to shield their feelings.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content