Yorgos Lanthimos Quotes

By Alan Reiner – July 22, 2024

‘For me, filmmaking is not about making statements but about exposing human behavior so people are eager enough to start thinking on their own and make their own assumptions.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I make films to explore concepts and raise questions, not tell the audience what to think.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I think you can tell a lot about people if you observe them as they’re observing.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘When I look at my films, all I see is everything that went wrong.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘Provocative… I used to be defensive about it, but in the end, I realised it’s exactly right. It’s what we’re trying to do – to provoke thought and discussion and, you know, shake people up to start thinking about things in a different way. I’m interested in messing with what they think is the norm.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I find it very interesting to keep people uncertain about what is what and figure it out as they go.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

”The Lobster,’ at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer,’ which turned out to be not as accessible as ‘The Lobster.’ It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘Telling a story is the way of exploring so many different things – human behavior, society, whatever existence.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘There are various ways of delivering some kind of truth, so I try to find the style or the way that I find more effective.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘The way I work, and the material we work with, I think if you analyze too much and have too many specific ideas, it just becomes a little bit too superficial, and then performances might become too self-conscious and project relatively narrow things.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘For me, casting is very instinctive, and if I don’t feel good about it, I just can’t go ahead and make the film.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I used to be quite negative about going back to Greece and making something, but there is a certain kind of freedom that I’ve experienced while I was making films in Greece that is hard to replicate elsewhere.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘Starting in Greece, you couldn’t really say, ‘I’m going to become a film-maker.’ A 15-year-old boy in Greece in the ’80s and ’90s? There was nothing like that happening.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I think I do things that are more common in theatre.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I don’t have time to read much. I’m trying to read ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ again, for a year now – I keep getting halfway, and then there’s a lot of work, and I forget it, and I have to go back to the beginning.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I just try and decide what I’m interested in and what excites me. I don’t worry about how it’s going to be perceived.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I never thought that I would ever actually get to make films. Being from Greece, it wasn’t really a reality.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘I did have a lot of years watching and appreciating dance and theater and all of those kind of things, and it has informed the way that I work with actors and the way I approach things.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘It’s hard for me to find a script that’s perfectly suited to me, so even if it’s a good script, I’ll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I’ve generated anyway.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos

‘Having rules means that sometimes people break them, and that means punishment.’ – Yorgos Lanthimos