Quotes from Matthew Heineman

The story of everyday people rising up to fight against evil to protect their families - it's a story that we've seen play out throughout history and across the world today.

With newspapers cutting foreign bureaus and budgets shrinking for long-form, investigative journalism, documentary filmmakers are often filling a void nowadays in the media landscape with their ability to spend time with their stories and subjects.

'Cartel Land' seeks to give voice to the people of Mexico who suffer grievous harm from cartel violence and government corruption.

In my humble opinion, propaganda is one of the most evil tools humans have used against humans throughout history to justify wars, justify atrocities, justify evil. ISIS has taken it to a new extreme.

Health care has become a political football that is being tossed back and forth by both sides in Washington. And it's divided our country.

I don't drink coffee.

I landed a job at HBO, working for two years on the 'The Alzheimer's Project,' which aired in May 2009. I was fortunate to work with a great mentor, producer John Hoffman, and the amazing doc filmmaker Susan Froemke.

It's going to take each of us coming together to muster the strength to look in the mirror and ask, 'How can I help create a sustainable health care system for the 21st century?'

If you're going to see 'City of Ghosts' because you want to understand everything about the Syrian conflict and how to fix it, then it's the wrong film to see.

I want to move people to think and ponder the question of their own healthcare. And it doesn't need to be political thinking.

There's this fascination in America that more is better: we want that procedure. And more is not necessarily better when it comes to health care. We as consumers really need to understand that.

The story is supposed to change; it's supposed to evolve. In making 'Cartel Land,' I ended up with a much, much different story than I started with.

At medical centers such as the Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser Permanente, teams of doctors and nurses provide coordinated care while working for salary instead of getting paid for every procedure.

Bombs are not going to fix ISIS.

There's a wide range of motivations that led folks to patrol the border, to be part of Arizona Border Recon.

'Cartel Land' explores what happens when - in a Mexican society without order, law or security - vendettas, terror, and corruption go hand in hand with the pursuit of a better world.

We have a fee-for-service system that rewards quantity, not quality: profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care. So doctors order more tests, more procedures, and more drugs - we actually consume more prescription drugs in the U.S. than the rest of the world combined.

Health is the one thing we all have in common regardless of race, creed, or income. Everyone should participate in creating the solutions.

We have this fascination that more is better, and we - what we learned was more isn't better ; that more care can actually hurt you. That fascination with the quick fix is often hurting us. One-third of health-care spending doesn't even improve health care.

So much of the access that I was able to gain with the Autodefensas was over months, not days.

My job is to generate discussion.

I think one of the major themes in 'Escape Fire,' really, if you break it down, is that huge institutions, the military, the Safeway Corporation and others, are being forced to change.

I found out I wanted to be a filmmaker almost by accident after graduating from college in 2005.

Growing up in the digital age of filmmaking, I'm as guilty as anyone of overshooting.