Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes
-
“For me, filmmaking is not about making statements but about exposing human behavior so people are eager enough to start thinking on their own and make their own assumptions.”
-
“I make films to explore concepts and raise questions, not tell the audience what to think.”
-
“I think you can tell a lot about people if you observe them as they're observing.”
-
“When I look at my films, all I see is everything that went wrong.”
-
“Provocative… I used to be defensive about it, but in the end, I realised it's exactly right. It's what we're trying to do - to provoke thought and discussion and, you know, shake people up to start thinking about things in a different way. I'm interested in messing with what they think is the norm.”
-
“I find it very interesting to keep people uncertain about what is what and figure it out as they go.”
-
“'The Lobster,' at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer,' which turned out to be not as accessible as 'The Lobster.' It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.”
-
“Telling a story is the way of exploring so many different things - human behavior, society, whatever existence.”
-
“There are various ways of delivering some kind of truth, so I try to find the style or the way that I find more effective.”
-
“The way I work, and the material we work with, I think if you analyze too much and have too many specific ideas, it just becomes a little bit too superficial, and then performances might become too self-conscious and project relatively narrow things.”
-
“For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don't feel good about it, I just can't go ahead and make the film.”
-
“I used to be quite negative about going back to Greece and making something, but there is a certain kind of freedom that I've experienced while I was making films in Greece that is hard to replicate elsewhere.”
-
“Starting in Greece, you couldn't really say, 'I'm going to become a film-maker.' A 15-year-old boy in Greece in the '80s and '90s? There was nothing like that happening.”
-
“I think I do things that are more common in theatre.”
-
“I don't have time to read much. I'm trying to read 'The Brothers Karamazov' again, for a year now - I keep getting halfway, and then there's a lot of work, and I forget it, and I have to go back to the beginning.”
-
“I just try and decide what I'm interested in and what excites me. I don't worry about how it's going to be perceived.”
-
“I never thought that I would ever actually get to make films. Being from Greece, it wasn't really a reality.”
-
“I did have a lot of years watching and appreciating dance and theater and all of those kind of things, and it has informed the way that I work with actors and the way I approach things.”
-
“It's hard for me to find a script that's perfectly suited to me, so even if it's a good script, I'll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I've generated anyway.”
-
“Having rules means that sometimes people break them, and that means punishment.”