In the neighborhood around ...

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director.
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 Hirokazu Koreeda

Quotes from the same author

The biggest considerations I had were practical: how do you move such a large number of actors around a small space? So, for example, if I have to have the mother bring a pot of tea from the kitchen to the living room and serve it to the others, how do I, on a practical level, get everyone into the frame? Any decisions I made about the camera angles or movement came out of necessity, versus any sort of stylistic choice.
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 Hirokazu Koreeda
In order to avoid sentimentality and to be able to write the screenplay with the kind of humor and irony necessary to keep the story moving, I needed to distance myself as much as I could from the characters, to try to get to a point where I could view them objectively.
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 Hirokazu Koreeda
As far as documentaries go, I believe unreservedly that they serve an important function in our culture. I'd love to be able to make both documentaries and feature films simultaneously, but so far that hasn't happened.
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 Hirokazu Koreeda
If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West.
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 Hirokazu Koreeda