Celine Sciamma

“Well, I think I'm trying to be in the middle of two traditions, the French tradition, which is about being fair and staying close to reality, and the American tradition which is about making up a stylized universe, made of shapes and colors.”

“What's universal in America about teenagehood is a middle-class white boy with average dreams.”

“My work has always been about not being conventional and male gaze is convention.”

“I do not want to belong to cinema history. I am a woman - I know I'm doomed anyway.”

“Shooting with kids you only have three hours on set per day, so you have to know what you want. You have maybe four or five takes to get a scene.”

“We're always being told that there's a linear progress regarding women. It only gets better, especially for women artists. It's not true.”

“Films made by women belong to the history of cinema; it's just that we get erased pretty quickly.”

“We are always told that with women's rights and opportunities for women there's been constant progress, and it isn't true. It works in cycles.”

“Every film relies on our brain and heart to expand its universe. 'Petite Maman' leaves room for your story to be looked at in that room.”

“Working with young actors is really going with trust. I never see them act beforehand. Because that's not their job. It's my job to make it happen on set.”

“To me synchronised swimming is a metaphor for the job of being a girl. They have to fake their smiles, they're made up like dolls and they can't show the effort they're making, yet under the surface of the water it's a struggle and a sacrifice.”

“Really, with 'Water Lilies', the project was to end the movie where other movies would begin.”

“My film-making is the privilege of French cinema. I would have to do things totally differently elsewhere. But I think I could learn from that and have fun being part of a bigger collective.”

“Normally I'm watching people become actors in the process of making the film. It's very important you have a lot of respect when you are dealing with young people. You are in charge of everything about the process. You're an adult and they're not.”

“With 'Back to the Future', time-traveling lets you go back to a better, more comfortable life where your parents are happy and you have a lot of money - the capitalistic version of time travel.”

“Love educates us about art. Art consoles us from lost love. Our great loves are a condition of our future love.”

“I like 'Girlhood' because it has this universal feeling, and that's also the project of the film, to bring very contemporaneous characters into the big fiction, and the classical idea of a heroine's emancipation.”

“When you are bringing a love story to screen, how do you embody desire and love? How do you get away from the conventions of romantic comedy where it's love at first sight?”

“My films have mostly been about the rise of desire as the discovery of oneself.”

“I consider my first three films a trilogy and I was finished with discussing the topic of teenagehood and coming of age.”