Denis Villeneuve Quotes

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Denis Villeneuve

Profession : Director

Birth : October 3, 1967

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.

Denis Villeneuve

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.

Denis Villeneuve

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.

Denis Villeneuve

The thing I realized about final cut is it's the power of the best cut. I didn't have final cut on 'Prisoners,' but what you saw is the best cut. 'Sicario' is a directors' cut. 'Arrival' is a directors' cut.

Denis Villeneuve

I think a good director is a good listener.

Denis Villeneuve

'2001: A Space Odyssey' is a movie that really impressed me as a teenager. And also 'Blade Runner.' And 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' is also one of my favorites. I'm always looking for sci-fi material, and it's difficult to find original and strong material that's not just about weaponry.

Denis Villeneuve

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.

Denis Villeneuve

I'm not someone that loves dialogue - I am someone that loves movement. Action, if it's well done, can be very poetic and meaningful.

Denis Villeneuve

I've always been in love with language. My favorite book is a dictionary. I have always loved words.

Denis Villeneuve

Making poetry with a camera - that's the essence of what I do.

Denis Villeneuve

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

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

Denis Villeneuve

The thing is that when you are a director, you need to be involved in a lot of different fields. You must be a psychologist, an architecture expert; you must be a choreographer.

Denis Villeneuve

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

Denis Villeneuve

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' Big, big, big smash for me. My birth of the love of cinema was born with 'Close Encounters' and '2001.' Those sci-fi movies I saw when I was a little kid.

Denis Villeneuve

'Sicario' is about how the Western world reacts toward problems outside of its borders. Should we become monsters in order to fight the monsters? It's not about the cartels. The movie could have been set in Africa or the Middle East.

Denis Villeneuve

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.

Denis Villeneuve

'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.

Denis Villeneuve

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

A longstanding dream of mine is to adapt 'Dune,' but it's a long process to get the rights, and I don't think I will succeed.

Denis Villeneuve