Olivier Assayas

Movies are expressions of our imagination. They are expressions of our conscious and of our subconscious. I think that movies can be analyzed the way dreams are analyzed. Show less «

Ultimately, what I am most interested in is what contradicts what I have written because that's exactly where real life moves into the film. Show less «

[on director Michael Mann] It's miraculous to find such a great stylist in contemporary American cinema. ["La cinémathèque imaginaire", Cine-regards] Show less «

Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) deals with an actress, who has to navigate through those different layers of reality - it is pretty much a portrait of Juliette Binoche, as she is today, not a movie with Binoche, but a movie about her. She really brings a lot of herself into this character, so it has fairly deep roots. Show less «

I think that it's important to understand, intuitively understand, what you are doing. But when you are doing it you must follow instinct. There has to be a certain level of risk, creating images, characters, emotions, it involves something a little brutal. You must be prepared to go in areas where you lose control. Show less «

I like the adventure of making films. And the adventure of making films has to do with the capacity you have of listening to your guts. Show less «

When I started making films, the people I was hanging out with, the scene in Paris at the time was very much musicians. So once in a while it pops up and I use it as a background. Because there are moments in life when you just have to say hello to your old friends. Show less «

I am a fan of Michael Mann; he is one of the most inspired stylists in American cinema today, but it was all there from the start. In Thief (1981), his first feature, you have echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville (it goes full circle), a sharp eye for realism, but also profound human characters with precisely drawn relationships, and great acting. Mann's fascination with a geometrical modernity, even if it is always mediated by genre filmmaking, is genuinely reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni - explicitly so in the last scenes of Heat (1995). [Criterion Coll., 2015] Show less «