Sebastian Lelio

“The living experience of film only happens when a film is seen, and only within the spectator, because they project their own fears, desires, and fantasies upon those lights and shadows.”

“I knew 'Transparent' and saw a few episodes of 'Orange is the New Black,' so I knew about the trans actor in that cast. Of course, I saw 'Boys Don't Cry' back in the day. But the path that led me to this subject was different... it's just my curiosity as a human being more than my awareness of any political struggles.”

“Poetry was my 'in' to the idea that I could express myself through art.”

“Those of us who make movies play with perception and reality; those who watch our films are responsible for making sense of it.”

“Either we learn to live together and embrace the complexity of life, or we will end up with fascism again and destroy ourselves.”

“I'm always trying to get my characters to the point of complete rebelliousness. I like that attitude that characters feel when they own their lives. There's something beautiful in the moments when characters disobey.”

“'Gloria' was a gamble.”

“In order to make a film, you have to operate on many different levels, making all these different forms of expression converse, and so I just followed that intuition.”

“Fashion is totally political, the icon of a political system.”

“Creative processes are always very opaque. Afterwards, you tend to pretend that everything was planned and it was a strategy, but it was not like that at all.”

“I'm interested in the intersection of character and actor.”

“I grew up surrounded by strong women, and that was a very strong influence.”

“I'm interested in characters. I love them, and I love to write them.”

“I don't believe in closed scripts; I think that they should be open.”

“We all face crossroads in our lives where we can retreat into ourselves, or we can hit the dance floor.”

“'Gloria' is a film about a fifty eight-year-old woman who is quite alone in life; however, she is quite optimistic. Nobody has much time for her, and so she regularly goes to these single adults' parties where she is looking for someone. By the end of the film, she doesn't necessarily find love, but she does find something else.”

“To me, there was something moving about the idea of telling the story of a lady who is, in a way, a forgotten character - someone who would normally be a secondary role in a movie.”

“Every human society has its lights and its shadows. That's the reality of existence.”

“When you're filming, not everything is rational.”

“Film is a game of projections upon projections, and the projected image on the screen is a game of light and shadows. There is nothing there; it is the brain that is decoding those things. The film doesn't have any decipherable kind of meaning if it's not seen.”