Andrew Haigh

If you're struggling, it's easy to feel powerless until you take control of it and assert what you want. I can understand that feeling. I can understand how it feels to be alone, to not want to get help from people and to not trust people who are actually wanting the best for you. I feel like that's true for a lot of people, actually.

Call Me by Your Name' is essentially the universal nature of love.

We have a choice every day to do whatever we do, and that choice is quite scary because it could absolutely change everything about our lives. It's important to keep reminding myself that I have a choice.

For me, all you want from your actor is for them to engage on a deeply emotional level with the material. If you feel like that happens, directing the actors is pretty much done at that point.

If I see someone break down in tears, I don't necessarily feel empathy for them in those moments unless it's really warranted. I feel like a tear needs to be warranted in a movie; it needs to be earned.

I always think that there's a weight of prejudice from the past that gay people perhaps carry around with them. Even if it doesn't exist so much around them, they still have a feeling of being excluded, and perceived prejudice is almost as unsettling as actual prejudice.

I think people have this idea that I just lived in my place in England and never left. During 'Looking,' I was in America for four years. I've got a green card. I spend half my time there. It doesn't feel like an alien world at all.

The endings to me are the key moment in 'Weekend' and '45 Years.' I know how I want my gut to feel at the ending. Even if I can't articulate in words what that feeling is, I'm trying to find ways to get there.

I went through a period of watching probably too many Bergman films in a row. I felt like I'd discovered the answer to what cinema should be.

I'm really bad at knowing if something I've done is any good. I can't work it out; I can't be objective about anything I do.

I think the films that work the best are the ones that seem to be about one thing but then, under the surface, bubbling away, are lots more important questions that you're not really aware of, and when you leave the cinema, your mind is ablaze with different thoughts!

Certain people like the way I make films, and others do not. I've come to terms with the fact that there's no other way I can make films. If I tried to do it in a different way, it would never work.