Denis Villeneuve

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' Big, big, big smash for me. My birth of the love of cinema was born with 'Close Encounters' and '2001.' Those sci-fi movies I saw when I was a little kid.

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I like the idea that cinema is a spectacle.

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The truth is, I'm someone coming from a spoiled society - the worst thing we deal with in Canada is winter.

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I'm very sensitive about the fact that there's not a lot of good work for women in cinema that also deals with strong characters. But 'strong character' doesn't mean 'masculine character' - but something that finds the strength in femininity and the beauty in femininity. And something that says you can find femininity in men in some way.

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Sometimes you have compulsions that you can't control coming from the subconscious... they are the dictator inside ourselves.

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I feel, since 2001, this huge need for Americans to have superheroes on the screen. This idea that a super-being will protect you. That this being can go above the law but, at the end of the day, would be a good force and defeat the evil. This idea that this half-god exists. This need in the subconscious of America to find these gods.

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I think I'm attracted to subjects that I'm afraid of. It's a way to approach things I am afraid of, things that bring fear in my heart, and try to understand them, try to deal with them. It's like demons. I try to approach it and understand it... I'm just visiting fears.

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I made 'Enemy' to prep myself for 'Prisoners.' I had the need to direct something smaller in English before going to Hollywood. That's the way I sold it to Warner because they asked me if I was berserk to make a movie right before.

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'Sicario' is about how the Western world reacts toward problems outside of its borders. Should we become monsters in order to fight the monsters? It's not about the cartels. The movie could have been set in Africa or the Middle East.

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Quotes by Denis Villeneuve