Jose Padilha

I have to be clear with myself and very conscious of what I am trying to say. Misunderstandings will always take place; it's unavoidable.

No wonder we have a lot of violence in Rio: the corrupt and violent policemen meet the violent criminals in the streets. What else is going to happen?

People can't stand it when you deal with issues of race and class, and also sometimes the church, and you give a perspective that flushes out hypocrisy.

If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate. We like to create a bridge between those two worlds - film and science.

Either you look back and deal with your hypocrisy, or you dismiss it.

Science is based on the possibility of objectivity, on the possibility of different people checking out for themselves the observations made by others. Without that possibility, there is no empirical principle capable of deciding between different arguments and theories.

I don't actually like blocking actors. I prefer giving actors freedom. They don't have to step on a precise mark with me. Instead of giving marks to the actors I like to give marks to the camera.

Listen, I like great actors. You can be a movie star without being a great actor - this has been proved several times - and I like my casts to have great actors. Acting is more important to me than being a star.

A lot of jobs today are being automated; what happens when you extend that concept to very important areas of society like law enforcement? What happens if you start controlling the behavior of criminals or people in general with software-running machines? Those questions, they look like they're sci-fi but they're not.

I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop and I think that such a film is now urgently needed.

I like to give dimension to shots inside action scenes. It's demanding because you have to rehearse a lot of things happening at the same time and frame all those things in a shot. But I feel like when you accomplish that then you've got a cool action scene.

Measurements, observations, descriptions can only be considered scientific when they are independently confirmed by other people.