Quotes by Jean-Jacques Annaud

• I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature.
• The French have got to understand that a film is so expensive that it can no longer afford to be regional or even national in scope.
• When Americans shoot movies they aim at the entire planet. When the French make movies, they aim at Paris.
• When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.
• War scenes are less difficult than love scenes.
• Today's cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world's total.
• To do the writing, I have to have time to do research.
• When you create a movie, you create something in your image.
• The art of motion pictures is pictorial and language comes a distant second.
• The financing of my films has always been international.
• The world distribution of French movies is a laughing matter. That is a fact.
• There is a broad cultural current that conveys the idea that a film is like a football team, it represents a nation, it is illustrated literature, filmed radio. These are outdated concepts, totally out of touch with today's realities.
• My way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was French in style, reflecting my personality.
• If you make a movie about Elizabeth I, how much of the dialogue is her real words? Audiences know when they go see a movie that it is fiction.
• I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can.
• British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.
• America is the only country capable of producing national movies: its culture has become a global culture.