Yorgos Lanthimos

“You tend to be more attentive when you shoot on film because, you know, it costs more, and everybody needs to be focused when you're filming something. Everybody considers it something valua...”

“As an audience member myself, I love to be in a position where I'm trying to figure out what I am supposed to feel or if what I'm feeling is appropriate or not.”

“We were fortunate enough to shoot 'Alps' - write the script and shoot it - right after 'Dogtooth' premiered in Cannes. So we didn't just sit around and wait to figure out what to do because...”

“I just do things that I'm interested in making and work with the people I'm interested in working with, and it's very important for me to maintain the creative control because, otherwise, I...”

“By employing a certain sense of humor, you essentially get more serious about things and show conflict more effectively than if you were overly dramatic or only violent because that's a one-...”

“I always loved films, and when I decided to go to film school, it was with the excuse that I would go into making commercials, because that would be a proper profession, and people wouldn't...”

“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 mak...”

“Even today, I'm not sure why I make films or what makes me want films. I think it's other people's films. Whenever I see a really great film, I think, 'I want to make a film like that.' And...”

“Yeah, it shouldn't be an issue. Stories about women, about men, about homosexuals, about heterosexuals. We shouldn't point at what it is.”

“I think human relationships - the whole thing is cruel. It's very difficult.”

“'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work.”

“'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...”

“The first time I was paid was with 'The Lobster,' because with the Greek films, we just had to pay ourselves - work for free while making commercials in order to survive.”

“I am not interested in representing reality. Actually, I am interested in representing reality, but that doesn't mean a naturalistic approach, which I think is kind of impossible.”

“The most important thing is to allow gaps and openings for people to make up their own minds - I don't want my film to be pretending to have one important truth to tell anyone.”

“Personal relationships, mood, chance, or anything like that can actually affect people's decisions, and when they're in a position of power, their capriciousness can affect the fate of a nat...”

“People influence each other, so one screening will be filled with laughs while another is dead silent.”

“I think you can be much truer to real emotions and reality by creating something that on the surface seems artificial but, by then putting everything together in the end, is much more impact...”

“In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it's my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and ab...”