Citas

When I was young, I would sit in the bath and ideas would come to me. But I'm not young any more, so now I just sit in the bath.

Cinema is dead. It died 1962, I think it was in October!

I like dogs, mankind I don't care for too much. You're supposed to like mankind because you're part of it, but I prefer dogs. They are honest and they don't lie.

Maybe my films are not masterpieces, but they are documents of their time. That's enough for me. Masterpieces I can't do - even though I try.

The problem is, I have seen all the other films. All the serious films ever made I have seen, more or less. They are so good... and I am so bad. Very early in my so-called career, I knew I would never make a masterpiece. So I decided to make lots of decent films.

I have two methods. If I have a screenplay, I follow it. If I don't, I improvise. Nobody else improvises - not the cameraman or the actors. Just me.

When I write, I am sober. I can direct drunk. I can't edit or write drunk.

How can you write the dialogue for films about the middle class? They might have as hard mental troubles as anyone else, but the dialogue is impossible. It is easier to be a slave or to be a boss.

Coffee? I don't want coffee. To talk about my lousy films I need more than coffee.

I would like to explain the violence in this film. Because it makes me uncomfortable. The problem is this story had to start with violence. So I wanted to at least make it honest. Because if people want to see violence looking good, there is something wrong with their heads. So I make it look as it really is, fast and ugly. This is my rule and my explanation.

Hollywood has melted everyone's brains. In the old days you had one murder and that was enough for a story. Now you have to kill 300,000 people just to get the audience's attention. And in Helsinki the violence is not glamorous. It is nameless. There, someone hits you just because they are in a bad mood.

I must make clear that I didn't boycott the New York film festival. I like the New York film festival very much. I boycotted the US government. I was at the airport with my ticket in my hand and I heard Abbas wasn't being let in, and I thought, OK, if the US government doesn't want an Iranian film-maker then they won't want a Finn either. And I will not go where I am not wanted.

I think the more pessimistic I feel about life, the more optimistic the films should be.

I first get a title and then I write a script for the title.

I always decide to put a sad ending but then I feel pity for my characters and put at the last moment a happy ending.

I always start with everyday realism, everyday situations, and I try to go darker and darker and in the end, it's melodrama. Even the light has changed: in the beginning, the light is quite normal and in the end, there are big shadows.

[when told he must have been influenced by Robert Bresson] I want to make him seem like a director of epic action pictures.

[why he'll never shoot on digital formats] I am a film-maker, not a pixel-maker. [2018]

Of course, the working class is not such a sexy and commercial subject, I understand from the popcorn audience. But I couldn't write dialogue for upper-class people because I wouldn't know what they say. I don't know if they talk at all. Maybe they are just shopping. And selling and buying stocks. Stocks and stockings. I find rich people boring. [2018]

I never had very high hopes of humanity. I had hope 20 years ago, but not now. Greed will kill us - and maybe that's OK for the planet. Because it all goes back to money. Everything goes back to money. [2018]

Tragicomedy seems to be my genre. I like to return to the themes of my youth and talk about the little man's struggle against the faceless machine - and himself - all the while not forgetting about the humor.