Quotes from Celine Sciamma

The dream of the theater for for me is that it's a room full of adults and kids. I want kids and grownups to be totally focused on the same object.

We all have to deconstruct the looks in ourselves. It's easier if you see different cultures and different imagery than just the pure straight male gaze and that you're aware that images are political. Not everybody is.

The cinema should offer new images, create new memories.

My films have mostly been about the rise of desire as the discovery of oneself.

A few weeks ago I went to a screening of 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' at Utopia. I'm not a very introspective person but when I get on that stage, it feels even more overwhelming than showing my films at the Cannes film festival. Because standing there, I'm so close to my past. I can see how far I've come.

I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.

I think that childhood is innocent, but not in the way we usually believe. I think it's a very sensual age, where emotions and feelings are so strong just for the simple fact that we are living them for the first time.

It's always a balance between something that touches you intimately and something that you think is going to be generous - I like to find intimate, subtle subjects and bring them into strong story telling.

I filmed 'Water Lilies' in Cergy-Pointoise, a middle-class suburb about 20 km outside Paris. It's where I grew up and where Eric Rohmer filmed 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend' in 1986.

I'm not a big Avengers person. I don't have a lot of that culture. But you can totally enjoy 'WandaVision' without having that.

I think my movies are very much about the female gaze... But it's not going to happen magically if you're a woman. It's still something you have to deconstruct, but it's not something you have to be vigilant about.