Yorgos Lanthimos

“Having rules means that sometimes people break them, and that means punishment.”

“I never thought that I would ever actually get to make films. Being from Greece, it wasn't really a reality.”

“I've played around with the notion of making a series on the premise of 'Alps' because it's one of the films no one saw.”

“'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work.”

“In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it's my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and absurdity of things that we consider normal.”

“I make films that are what they are. Some people like them, and some people don't.”

“It's hard for me to find a script that's perfectly suited to me, so even if it's a good script, I'll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I've generated anyway.”

“As long as I can make the films I want to make in decent conditions, I am happy.”

“I don't have time to read much. I'm trying to read 'The Brothers Karamazov' again, for a year now - I keep getting halfway, and then there's a lot of work, and I forget it, and I have to go back to the beginning.”

“I just think it's interesting to start a dialogue.”

“I never knew that I would even be making English-language films.”

“We were fortunate enough to shoot 'Alps' - write the script and shoot it - right after 'Dogtooth' premiered in Cannes. So we didn't just sit around and wait to figure out what to do because 'Dogtooth' was successful. We just wanted to make another film fast, so we just went ahead and did it.”

“Being extremely honest is quite funny. But there's no recipe or concept that I can bring up that fully defines what we find humorous. It's instinctive.”

“I think it's been obvious from the beginning that my projects are not going to be something that people already have in mind. You can't be thinking about such things when you create something.”

“I enjoy sometimes focusing on a character in a scene that's not actually doing the main action or the talking.”

“I just do things that I'm interested in making and work with the people I'm interested in working with, and it's very important for me to maintain the creative control because, otherwise, I just don't want to do it.”

“I'm interested in many different things. I guess I just want to evolve.”

“I haven't been a director-for-hire for any project. I work with people who appreciate that, understand that, and want to work that way.”

“Because we're brought into the world or educated in a certain way, we're trained to accept the world in a certain way.”

“Don't think too hard. Just be present, and things will reveal themselves.”