No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

What is played in French cinema does not only concern our very privileged environment, it concerns all of society

I love the French. They’re the biggest film buffs and protectors of cinema in the world. They really look out for the filmmaker and the rights of the filmmaker, and they believe in final cut.

It was time to represent blacks in French film—in under a month, we went from coauthors to a true collective

Les Efants du Paradis, which opens the Rialto for a new season of French films, is the crown of the French cinema, and must be an abiding delight to anyone, in any country, who feels the stir of the world of art.

The world of French crime films is a particular place, informed by the French love for Hollywood film noir, a genre they identified and named. But the great French noirs of the 1950s are not copies of Hollywood; instead, they have a particularly French flavor.

I hope we can get together to make this cinema accessible.

I always preferred American movies to French films. The French talked too much. There was more action in American movies.

Can we get like Gone with the Wind back, please? Sunset Boulevard, so many great movies.

Fifty years after the October Revolution, the American industry rules cinema the world over. There is nothing much to add to this statement of fact. Except that on our own modest level we too should provoke two or three Vietnams in the bosom of the vast Hollywood-Cinecittá-Mosfilm-Pinewood-etc. empire, and, both economically and aesthetically, struggling on two fronts as it were, create cinemas which are national, free, brotherly, comradely and bonded in friendship.

I have to keep making films in my country so that it gets established as an industry at home.

[I miss] the warmth of the [Italian] people: it is very easy to communicate with them, while the French are not such extroverts. On the other hand, there is a vibrant film industry in France: at least two hundred films are produced there, and the job opportunities are many. Unfortunately, the Italian film industry does not compare.

I think as a filmmaker, I just want to make my film shine, be recognized by the audience first. Besides, I also want to call on the Vietnamese audience to support Vietnamese films because they are the ones who decide the survival of the film. If the audience does not love it, the film will not have the opportunity to recover capital or shine on the market. If Vietnamese films are not supported and shined, it will be difficult for producers to produce films anymore, if this situation persists, there will be no more Vietnamese films to watch in the future. Therefore, I also want audiences with Vietnamese spirit to support Vietnamese films.

When I was young, the idea of “world cinema” didn’t exist. We would watch any films that we could find in the cinemas. Today, some of those films have become accessible again on streaming platforms. In a way, it doesn’t matter as much where they exist as long as people have access to them.