Jacques Audiard

The cinema, as literature, as all the plastic arts, do not exist outside of a critical system that allows us to study them.

I was the little French boy who grew up hearing people talk of De Gaulle and the Resistance. France against the Nazis! Then when that boy grew up, he began to uncover things. We began to legitimately ask the question, 'What exactly did our parents do during the Occupation?' We discovered it was not the story they were telling us.

Cool? Am I cool? I don't know, but I hope my characters are cool, in the sense of iconic. That's my job, at its very essence.

What interests me about genre is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big.

It's truly gratifying to see my films reach beyond a familiar public, to get a chance to move new audiences. It's nuts. It's extraordinary.

The cinema that interests me departs from realism.

When you're a kid and your father is an engineer, he goes to the office. I saw my father get up and go to the office in the house and write. But I don't see any similarities.

I don't like spontaneity; there you go. I'm wary of it.

Used properly, cinema is the coolest thing in the world.

Cinema for me only has meaning when it has a relationship with what I see outside on the street.

The most heroic thing you can do is tell someone that you love them.

Film is abstract, not definite. It is a dream.