“I have been told that… time doesn’t flow in a straight line in my films. It goes round in a circle. Sometimes people comment that the films remind them of Ozu. Maybe that’s right. But in Japan, nobody comments on how time passes in my films. So perhaps that is a different way of thinking.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Directing while overcoming differences of language and culture is a stimulating challenge.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It’s like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“There’s a difference between people being free and the atmosphere of ‘freedom.’”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“’Like Father, Like Son’ gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I’m less interested in death itself than in people whose lives are touched by it.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I never want to be the all-knowing god of the story, manipulating what’s to happen or the action.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When making documentaries, the most important thing I learned was to listen, observe gestures and facial expressions.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Maybe family is an eternal subject for me.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I have never made a film to praise or to criticize something. That kind of filmmaking is nothing but propaganda.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“My mother loved films! She adored Ingrid Bergman, Joan Fontaine, Vivien Leigh. We couldn’t afford to go together to the cinema, but she was always watching their movies on TV.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“My father did not have a lot of security in his life. He did odd jobs. He had a real struggle to make money. He lost a lot of time in his 20s, after the war, because he was sent to a forced-labour camp in Siberia.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“We used to have prawn tempura: that was my mother’s favourite dish. But she had to go out to work instead of my father, so she couldn’t find the time to cook nice meals. So we ate more modern food: a lot of frozen and instant food. But I never complained about it to my mother.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I am hopeful that films can connect people who are in conflict in a separated world.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“As a son and as a father, there are still various things that I haven’t done as well as I should have – that’s my dilemma and regret.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I was 27, I won an honorable mention in a scriptwriting contest and got a television job as an assistant director.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I grew up without a father.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“The children in ‘Nobody Knows’ had a resonance with me. The children are projections of myself.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Hardly anyone says anything real in the courtroom. Almost everything is decided ahead of time, and the truth is found behind the scenes.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I choose child actors, I chose them for their personalities. And then I work with their own vocabulary, so I’m not imposing text or dialogue on them: I’m just receiving.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Tokyo is wonderful for distribution of international films, a lot of Iranian films, Taiwanese films. But most of the art films are from Europe and Asia.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“In the eighties, there was a huge shift in the humor of Japanese television. Up until then, the humor was garnered by people who said humorous things, but in the ’80s, it was garnered by people who were being laughed at while the audience watches and watches.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I watch ‘Electronic Boy’ faithfully every week – not because I like the show but because I’m interested in where the smartest T.V. producers and directors are going, what direction they are headed in.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Privacy is not really a concept in Japan.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“It is righteous to receive state subsidies to make films that criticise the state – I want Japanese people to accept such European values.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“If my films did better at the box office in Japan, it would be easier to get them made.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Fast cutting, loud music, blood spewing everywhere, and gunshots permeating the scenes does not necessarily make for a shocking movie.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“A lot of people, especially Japanese, come to the theater to have a good cry.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger. It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves. Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“The vividness of children is easier to see when they’re completely left to their own devices.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“As the Japanese family gets more and more atomized, grandparents don’t live with the nuclear family, so parents of children can’t consult with their own parents about how to raise their children and rely on that to help raise them.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I’m so entranced by what unfolds in front of the camera. It seems wonderfully out of my control.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I believe that any auteur categorised in terms of an -ist or an -ism wouldn’t be able to capture the complex essence of human nature.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I make films, I don’t think of any other directors or their work in terms of the rhythm of the editing or the tenor of the performances.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I’ve been a fan of Yoshida Akimi’s manga for a long time; she’s one of a few women’s manga writers that I always read.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“It’s definitely good to have a hit from time to time, though not too often. If you have a few hits in a row, people start to think every film you make will be a hit, which is a big mistake.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“My mother used to work in a bank in Tokyo. It was a busy district, and after work, she used to go and watch films.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“You only get back what you are prepared to put in.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I have been told that my films remind people of Ozu, I have never been too convinced.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I am very happy that Japanese film can cross borders.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Japanese society doesn’t have a god – no absolute presence.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“The Japanese don’t have a specific religion, but a spirituality. A cap, shoes, and a table have a spirituality. When you eat an apple, you don’t say you eat it: you say, ‘I am receiving it.’ Kind of like you are thanking the food.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“There was a time when I thought Kim Novak was the sexiest woman in the world.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“My grandfather had Alzheimer’s. He would eat everything and anything that was around; then he wouldn’t remember that he ate it and would demand to be fed again.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“A film is not a vehicle to accuse, or to relay a specific message. If we reduce a film to this, we lose all hope for cinema to ignite a richer conversation.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Reflecting on the past, where the film industry became united with ‘national interest’ and ‘national policy,’ I tend to think that keeping a clear distance from government authority is the right thing to do.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I watch an actress say a line, I watch how they deliver the lines with gestures.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Japanese feel an intimacy with the dead, at least for people up to my generation.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I am 60 or 70, I am sure I can still continue to make films on families.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When I was a child, I loved making stories, so I thought maybe I would be a novelist.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I think a lot of Japanese morals are built around what the dead would think of us.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“We learn many things from children, always.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“In terms of film festivals, Cannes is the greatest launch pad.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“We can see loss as something missing, but that missing space can be filled with something else, and that creates healing.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I would say that ‘After the Storm’ is much more informed by my personal life than my other movies.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I particularly relate to the films of Mikio Naruse and Shinichi Kamoshita, a person whose work I watched very much as a child, a director of family dramas for television.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I don’t really like something serious depicted in a serious way; that’s not my style.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“With ‘Nobody Knows,’ I consciously set out to make a fiction film, which is a different approach from ‘Distance,’ but I still applied a lot of the things I learned from making ‘Distance’: for example, how to use the camera in relation to the children and how to create the right atmosphere on set.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“When you make a documentary, you have to adapt to what reality imposes upon you.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“I wanted to make ‘Nobody Knows,’ a kind of summation of the experiences I gained from making my first three films, the good ones as well as the bad ones.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Sometimes when you watch children, you feel that they show emotions that you, as an adult, can relate to.”
― Hirokazu Kore-eda
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