Quotes from Zal Batmanglij

Sci-fi always appealed to me, like, since I was a kid.

No one dives a dumpster like a rich kid dives a dumpster, because there's no shame.

I thought 'Gone Baby Gone' was really modern in showing a couple going on an adventure.

It's awesome to be part of a gay family.

I hate Q&As. They make me feel awkward.

We entered 'Lucid Grey' into the Georgetown festival on April 27, 2001. Now 'Sound of My Voice' is opening on April 27, 11 years later. It couldn't have happened in a more perfectly cinematic way.

When I was 14, I saw 'Terminator 2.' My mind was blown. What a beautiful movie. I found it really deep and also so entertaining.

The beauty of 'The OA' or 'Stranger Things' is that they are both made by Netflix for Netflix. And so there was a freedom all of a sudden that matched our intention.

I'm just interested in carving out a meaningful life.

That's the key thing I learned from making 'The East': It doesn't matter what happens in your life, good or bad. What matters is that there's a group around you to catch you when you fall and push you back up a little bit.

When I call 'Action,' I love to be surprised. And the actors I've been fortunate enough to work with always surprise me in the best ways.

Nobody can seem more politicised and glamorous than the baby-boomers. But their kids are surprisingly robust and late bloomers.

We're taught that food in a dumpster is waste. But when you find bags of bread that are perfectly good, all of a sudden that waste turns into bounty. That's an important shift in perception.

In film, it is always collaborative, and so to me, it doesn't make sense to not be collaborative in one of its most critical arenas - which is the screenplay.

I'm a gay man of colour.

To make 'Sound of My Voice,' we had to conceive the entire world and understand it holistically. If you want to show less in a movie, you've got to figure out more.

I guess it the one consistent thing in my life was that sense of magic that film provide - I still remember the movies from my childhood that I loved.

If you want to make an anarchist film, make it with a corporation.

I think that 'Sound of My Voice' is about the claustrophobia of living today, and how do you crawl out of the claustrophobia towards the light?

On 'Sound of My Voice,' I was the first and last word, which is kind of a dictatorship. I like collectives, though.

I think disparaging something you don't understand, while a very normal thing - I expect more from serious people.

You can't just express yourself and it becomes a movie. You have to get beyond that.

I loved 'Terminator 2' as a teenager and 'Sound of Music' when I was a kid. I also loved 'Requiem For A Dream' as a college student and 'Mulholland Drive.' And I have loved 'Lincoln' as an adult. They are all the same, as they are all good stories and extraordinary actors.

I'm very fascinated by genre.