Quotes from Yorgos Lanthimos

I never think about it much, the visual aspect of it, until we start making the movie. I don't really think about it when we write. When we finish, and I start putting the film together, and we pick the locations, I do think about that a lot.

Try to place the camera somewhere where you get most of the information from there, so you don't need to have too many shots and be too explanatory and expositional about the scene.

When people don't understand what they're watching, a lot of what they perceive has to do with who they themselves are.

I just try and decide what I'm interested in and what excites me. I don't worry about how it's going to be perceived.

All of us have been through relationships; there have been periods of time when we've been single. It's something that everyone experiences. It's a matter of making that observation and then start to ask questions about it: Why is it like that? And why do we feel that? And why are we organized this way? Isn't there any other way?

The best way to watch a film is to not know anything about the person who made it.

I wasn't a film buff.

It's hard for me to find a script that's perfectly suited to me, so even if it's a good script, I'll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I've generated anyway.

The way I work, and the material we work with, I think if you analyze too much and have too many specific ideas, it just becomes a little bit too superficial, and then performances might become too self-conscious and project relatively narrow things.

Personal relationships, mood, chance, or anything like that can actually affect people's decisions, and when they're in a position of power, their capriciousness can affect the fate of a nation.

I work very physically. I don't like to intellectualize too much about what we're doing, or analyze it.

'The Lobster,' at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer,' which turned out to be not as accessible as 'The Lobster.' It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.

We were fortunate enough to shoot 'Alps' - write the script and shoot it - right after 'Dogtooth' premiered in Cannes. So we didn't just sit around and wait to figure out what to do because 'Dogtooth' was successful. We just wanted to make another film fast, so we just went ahead and did it.

No studio picks up the phone after seeing 'Dogtooth' and goes, like, 'We have the next superhero movie.' Though if one did, that would be an interesting studio to work with.

I feel kind of offended when I watch films, and everything is explained to me - you know, laying out how I should feel from one scene to the next.

I don't make long-term plans, for sure.

I learned about making films by going into advertising, making commercials.

In general, I like contradictions and complex situations.

If actors are trying to convey, in a smart way, the context of the scene, that becomes too self-conscious.

If you use music boldly at the front of a scene, it creates another level.

I just do things that I'm interested in making and work with the people I'm interested in working with, and it's very important for me to maintain the creative control because, otherwise, I just don't want to do it.

'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work.

I've played around with the notion of making a series on the premise of 'Alps' because it's one of the films no one saw.

The most important thing is to allow gaps and openings for people to make up their own minds - I don't want my film to be pretending to have one important truth to tell anyone.