Kevin Macdonald

“When I was growing up on Loch Lomondside, one of the first albums I ever bought was Marley's 'Uprising.' I guess that would have been 1980 - just before he died.”

“The submarine genre is a category with all its own rules. But shooting on water is famously tough.”

“When you see how people in the developing world react and how they use a camera, you realise how narcissistic we are and how the filming of ourselves and thinking that we're interesting enough to care about is odd.”

“In war films, even more than in other kinds of documentary, we've come to think that shaky, poor-quality footage is somehow more authentic than something classically 'well shot.'”

“If there's a principle really worth sticking up for, I'll go the whole way.”

“I don't think life gets any better than sitting in the sun while a legend of French cinema tells you stories about making 'Belle de Jour' and other wonderful films, and eating great food.”

“'State of Play' is a romantic story at its heart.”

“People listen to The Beatles, but while they were muscially influential, they weren't culturally influential in quite the same way. You can go into the back of beyond in a little Indian village, and they will listen to Bob Marley. But they're not going to be listening to The Beatles or The Rolling Stones.”

“It's obviously presumptuous in some ways to talk about somebody's sexuality who's not here to describe themselves.”

“People who die in an untimely way who are artists, somehow that validates their art, we feel. Why culturally we feel that, I don't know.”

“The only obligation you have as a film-maker is to tell your version of the truth and to use your film to illuminate reality. Whatever that means.”

“I'm a cynical person who's normally attracted to the dark side of things.”

“The tradition has always been that in Roman films, the Romans are always British, and it's usually posh British: Laurence Olivier and his ilk. My take on all this was that it's a metaphor for empire and the end of empire.”

“Put someone on a horse looking cold and wet, and they don't have to act. They just are cold and wet.”

“Coming from documentaries, my biggest challenge was to understand actors' psychologies. American actors take it all very seriously; British actors don't enter into all this methody way of doing things.”

“With fiction, I've grown to really love the challenge of lying, the challenge of telling a good tale that isn't truthful, and working with performers is endlessly fascinating. You know, learning what a good performance is, how to get a good performance, how much or how little you need to create emotion or to create character.”

“No man, no woman is without their flaws.”

“If you can understand, you can feel compassion.”

“The thing with newspapers is that they are a filter. We're relying on the editors of that paper to be a filter and to tell you that this is worth reading about, this is quality, and this is quite reliable.”

“I went to see 'Francis Ha,' which I could certainly relate to. She ends up wandering the streets of Paris all alone - something I've ended up doing a number of times in capital cities around Europe.”