Quotes from Hirokazu Kore-eda

I believe that any auteur categorised in terms of an -ist or an -ism wouldn't be able to capture the complex essence of human nature.

As the Japanese family gets more and more atomized, grandparents don't live with the nuclear family, so parents of children can't consult with their own parents about how to raise their children and rely on that to help raise them.

When I have been told that my films remind people of Ozu, I have never been too convinced.

I've been a fan of Yoshida Akimi's manga for a long time; she's one of a few women's manga writers that I always read.

My father did not have a lot of security in his life. He did odd jobs. He had a real struggle to make money. He lost a lot of time in his 20s, after the war, because he was sent to a forced-labour camp in Siberia.

We used to have prawn tempura: that was my mother's favourite dish. But she had to go out to work instead of my father, so she couldn't find the time to cook nice meals. So we ate more modern food: a lot of frozen and instant food. But I never complained about it to my mother.

All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger. It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves. Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.

If my films did better at the box office in Japan, it would be easier to get them made.

My mother loved films! She adored Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Vivien Leigh. We couldn't afford to go together to the cinema, but she was always watching their movies on TV.

I watch 'Electronic Boy' faithfully every week - not because I like the show but because I'm interested in where the smartest T.V. producers and directors are going, what direction they are headed in.

There was a time when I thought Kim Novak was the sexiest woman in the world.

The children in 'Nobody Knows' had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.

When I was 27, I won an honorable mention in a scriptwriting contest and got a television job as an assistant director.

'Like Father, Like Son' gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.

We can see loss as something missing, but that missing space can be filled with something else, and that creates healing.

I think a lot of Japanese morals are built around what the dead would think of us.

Japanese feel an intimacy with the dead, at least for people up to my generation.

My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.

When I was a child, I loved making stories, so I thought maybe I would be a novelist.

When making documentaries, the most important thing I learned was to listen, observe gestures and facial expressions.

Directing while overcoming differences of language and culture is a stimulating challenge.

I would say that 'After the Storm' is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.

As a son and as a father, there are still various things that I haven't done as well as I should have - that's my dilemma and regret.

A film is not a vehicle to accuse, or to relay a specific message. If we reduce a film to this, we lose all hope for cinema to ignite a richer conversation.