- Me, personally, what I want is to allow people to be engaged actively in watching the film. I like to construct films in a way that makes you feel a bit uncomfortable, be able to enjoy them, be intrigued, start to think about the meaning of things - and hopefully by the end of it, you'll have some strong desire to keep thinking about them.
- It's really hard for me to talk about my films because there are a lot of things that are very intuitive and subconscious, things that someone can read that I'm not aware of. So sometimes it's so much better when someone else comes in and says, "I understand it this way." There's no wrong or right. It's just this thing that we put out there into the world, and hopefully each person will be able to experience it a different way. I have one reality, and I think certain things about it, but the best thing and the greatest thing about the experience of watching films-or any other kind of art in general-is that you can understand things on your own and have your own version of it. We allow that space for people.
- [on The Lobster] We started from the obvious thing, which was relationships-romantic relationships in particular-and love-couples questioning whether there is love. How do you find it? How do you realize when you've found it? And constructing this whole world around these kinds of questions. Then you touch up on all these other themes that have to do with how we construct our lives, our world, societies and the rules we live by. What is the relationship that we have with the rules and the norms? So hopefully it goes beyond couples and relationships in the end.
- [on the title of The Killing of a Sacred Deer] When we started writing the script and thinking about the story, we discovered there were some parallels with the tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides, and I thought it would be interesting to have a dialogue with something that is so ingrained in Western culture. In life, there are people who come up against huge dilemmas, and the concept of sacrifice raises a significant number of questions about everything.
- [on how he started making his films] Growing up in Greece, it was not very common for a young boy to say, "I'm going to become a filmmaker." At least back then, there weren't many filmmakers and no industry. So I was interested in films, but it started with a plan that sounded more feasible-to study film and television in order to make commercials, which is a real job where someone can make a living. That's why I went to film school. But, of course, in school I became more and more in love with films. Although I did start making a lot of commercials very early on-that's where I got my technical experience-I always had in mind that I wanted to make a film. So, at some point, we just started making our own films-a few friends asking for favors, using friends' houses, clothing and cars. By making commercials, investing the money we were making and working with friends, we were able to eventually make our first film without much other support, which in Greece was negligible anyway. That's how we made Kineta, Dogtooth and Alps.
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