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" My home is Montreal. I will stay in Montreal and continue to make movies in Montreal. But it's also very healthy for Canadian filmmakers to work outside the country. You learn so much. "

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" I would be trying to play hockey with my friends, but most of the time, the coach put me on the bench. Because I was too dreamy - I was dreaming all of the time. I was super bad on the ice because I was just thinking about something else. "

Denis Villeneuve

Thinking

Hockey

Friends

" I started in documentaries. I started alone with a camera. Alone. Totally alone. Shooting, editing short documentaries for a French-Canadian part of CBC. So to deal with the camera alone, to approach reality alone, meant so much. I made a few dozen small documentaries, and that was the birth of a way to approach reality with a camera. "

" If you don't deal with your shadows, you are condemned to repeat the same mistake over and over, as a human being or as a society. "

" If I wanted to have total control and be a dictator, I would do ice sculpture in my basement. If I want to make a movie, I'm going to work with 500 people, and I will have to work with their strength and their weakness. "

" I've been dreaming to do sci-fi since I was 10 years old, and I said 'no' to a lot of sequels - I couldn't say 'no' to 'Blade Runner.' "

" My movies are very often violent and dark, but there's a spectrum of light, and that light is coming from the women. "

" Cinema is an art form that is designed to go across borders. And as a filmmaker, the only way I can direct a movie is when I feel close to my culture. "

" 'Arrival' talks very little about language and how to precisely dissect a foreign language. It's more a film on intuition and communication by intuition, the language of intuition. "

" The problem in cinema is that you can never predict what will happen. "

" When I use violence in a movie, it's just to express the power, the impact of it. "

" I think they built Hollywood on the West Coast because they were always dreaming of a New World. When they arrived here, the only way to keep dreaming was to make movies. Film was the fourth dimension. "

" When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story. "

" In Canada, for boys, your identity is built on hockey. It's your social position; it's everything. And I was the worst hockey player of Canada. "

" In a way, the truth is that I was dreaming to do a movie in the United States just because, as a filmmaker, I always loved the idea of trying to make movies in a different culture, in a different way. It's always interesting to make a movie abroad. "

" I was saying to myself that I would love to try it once, just one time, to know what it's like to make a movie in Hollywood. I was so curious because most of my favorite directors were there. There's a history; there's a way of working. "

" Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not; that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema. "

" I'm very sensitive about the fact that there's not a lot of good work for women in cinema that also deals with strong characters. But 'strong character' doesn't mean 'masculine character' - but something that finds the strength in femininity and the beauty in femininity. And something that says you can find femininity in men in some way. "

" When there's no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start. "

" I think a good director is a good listener. "

" I made 'Enemy' to prep myself for 'Prisoners.' I had the need to direct something smaller in English before going to Hollywood. That's the way I sold it to Warner because they asked me if I was berserk to make a movie right before. "

" It's not about choosing a specific genre; that's not how I go about deciding what movies to make. "

" I'd love to be able to do a comedy like 'Dr. Strangelove.' I'm not a very serious person. Really, I'm very silly. "

Denis Villeneuve

Person

Comedy

" As a director, you're a bit of a dictator. But I feel that you're a better director if you're open to other people's ideas. It means that it's tougher: you have to be in a choosing process; you have to put the ego aside. As long as everybody's aiming in the same direction... I'm open to my main partners in the film crew. "

" When I think of the 1980s, the only color that comes to mind is a brown, yellowish color. I guess it's coming from my life experience, and it's melancholia and sadness and a bit of joy. "

" I was a sci-fi addict when I was a kid and a teenager. Novels, graphic novels, movies, it was my way to deal with reality. "

" When I work in English, I'd say I don't see a big difference in my rapport with my team or the actors. When I work in English or French, the music of the language is different, but beyond that music, in the depths, it's the same. "

" For me, masculinity is about control, and femininity is more of an embrace, the art of listening. It's very inspiring to explore the shadows of masculinity and femininity, and the tensions between both, and the place of women in the world right now. "

" The truth is, I'm someone coming from a spoiled society - the worst thing we deal with in Canada is winter. "

" The idea, as a director, is to be able to bring everybody on board and to inspire and give energy to everybody and to explain specific color, specific ambience. I need to be very precise, but I think I'm a better director when I'm more a channeler than a dictator. "

" I remember when I read the screenplay for 'Sicario,' I fell in love with it, but at the same time, I went, 'Oh no, not again.' I mean, I would love to fall in love with something that is more light, like a rom-com or a comedy. I would love to. Because it's very demanding to go to dark places like this. "