“What nurtures this root and makes it grow into a tree is the script. What makes the tree bear flowers and fruit is the directing.”

It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work.

One of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted.

I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working.

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film.

Russia has cultivated an opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision- making.

Once you discover that you can, then you must. And it’s not easy. You have to take direct steps.

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration.

We look directly into our suffering rather than try to become happy. The happiness that arises from this approach is reliable.

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working.

While the cameras are rolling, I rarely look directly at the actors, but focus my gaze somewhere else.

I don’t think my father had a direct influence on me, but I do think, more or less, I was influenced by his independent individualism.