David MacKenzie

“A lot of cinema is about the game of authenticity - do you feel it's real?”

“'Perfect Sense' is an extremely serious film, and I am an extremely serious film-maker who is trying to explore the medium in original and interesting ways.”

“I used to regard genres as being embedded in cliches, and I always felt funny about the need we have to label things. But I'm happy to think of 'Starred Up' as a prison drama, although we tried to smuggle in some elements of family drama in there.”

“I think we go to our graves being a bit weird.”

“I don't have any interest in doing superhero franchise movies. I don't connect to the fantastic, and I'm not a comic person - it's just not my thing, so I'm not looking in that direction - but ambitious films on a big scale I'm very interested in looking at.”

“I don't have continuity people. I don't have clapper boards. I don't have monitors. I shoot very fast, I shoot a lot, and we just keep on going.”

“Filmmaking is hard. I mean, it's not that hard, but it is hard to find your way through a system because there's a lot of people, there's money, there's a big machine to kind of make it - and how to find methods and processes that allow it to continue to be a lively process and a creative process.”

“I very rarely read a script that I don't feel I want to change a lot.”

“I sort of feel like my job is to be a conduit to opportunities, to maximize the creativity of the day itself - because that's when the cameras are running. That's the important thing to me. Some of these shots you need to think about in advance; you need to have some ideas for them.”

“Movies tend to be dislocated and non-linear in their process.”

“I'm an international director.”

“Somehow, the process of making movies conventionally can dampen creativity because you've got to wait in line to do everything the way it's supposed to be, particularly with actors who are just hanging out waiting for the call.”

“Signature film-making seems rather dull to me; it's about finding something you can do something with and running with the ball.”

“'Perfect Sense' is a film about love and catastrophe, which I hope is a powerfully romantic and emotional take on the apocalyptic sub-genre. Its aim is to be a minimalist concept movie - where seismic events occur in simple ways that ask the audience to use their imagination.”

“All my films are, in some way, romances. But I've always felt that the best romances are somehow doomed.”

“I always feel like a script is a recipe, and then you bring the elements into the recipe, and you cook with it.”

“Most of the films I've tried to make I've ended up making. And they don't necessarily go in the order you want to do. So I haven't got a huge list of undone films or stuff that's just been abandoned forever.”

“As I get older, I'm looking more and more for films that are actually about something rather than just narrative vehicles.”

“Food scenes in movies are traditionally nightmares to shoot - you just can't fake eating, and you usually have to repeat it a lot of times to get the angles you need. It's actually quite a lot to ask of actors, and there's really nowhere to hide.”

“As I get more confident as a filmmaker, I don't need to prepare so much in advance. I can trust that I and my team can come up with a solution.”