Quotes from Hirokazu Kore-eda

In terms of film festivals, Cannes is the greatest launch pad.

When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so I'm not imposing text or dialogue on them: I'm just receiving.

Fast cutting, loud music, blood spewing everywhere, and gunshots permeating the scenes does not necessarily make for a shocking movie.

In the eighties, there was a huge shift in the humor of Japanese television. Up until then, the humor was garnered by people who said humorous things, but in the '80s, it was garnered by people who were being laughed at while the audience watches and watches.

Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It's like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.

Hardly anyone says anything real in the courtroom. Almost everything is decided ahead of time, and the truth is found behind the scenes.

The Japanese don't have a specific religion, but a spirituality. A cap, shoes, and a table have a spirituality. When you eat an apple, you don't say you eat it: you say, 'I am receiving it.' Kind of like you are thanking the food.

The vividness of children is easier to see when they're completely left to their own devices.

Privacy is not really a concept in Japan.

I have never made a film to praise or to criticize something. That kind of filmmaking is nothing but propaganda.

I'm less interested in death itself than in people whose lives are touched by it.

When I make films, I don't think of any other directors or their work in terms of the rhythm of the editing or the tenor of the performances.

Reflecting on the past, where the film industry became united with 'national interest' and 'national policy,' I tend to think that keeping a clear distance from government authority is the right thing to do.

A lot of people, especially Japanese, come to the theater to have a good cry.

When I watch an actress say a line, I watch how they deliver the lines with gestures.

I wanted to make 'Nobody Knows,' a kind of summation of the experiences I gained from making my first three films, the good ones as well as the bad ones.

My grandfather had Alzheimer's. He would eat everything and anything that was around; then he wouldn't remember that he ate it and would demand to be fed again.

I'm so entranced by what unfolds in front of the camera. It seems wonderfully out of my control.

I have been told that... time doesn't flow in a straight line in my films. It goes round in a circle. Sometimes people comment that the films remind them of Ozu. Maybe that's right. But in Japan, nobody comments on how time passes in my films. So perhaps that is a different way of thinking.

My mother used to work in a bank in Tokyo. It was a busy district, and after work, she used to go and watch films.

Tokyo is wonderful for distribution of international films, a lot of Iranian films, Taiwanese films. But most of the art films are from Europe and Asia.

With 'Nobody Knows,' I consciously set out to make a fiction film, which is a different approach from 'Distance,' but I still applied a lot of the things I learned from making 'Distance': for example, how to use the camera in relation to the children and how to create the right atmosphere on set.

It's definitely good to have a hit from time to time, though not too often. If you have a few hits in a row, people start to think every film you make will be a hit, which is a big mistake.

I am hopeful that films can connect people who are in conflict in a separated world.