Denis Villeneuve

For me, masculinity is about control, and femininity is more of an embrace, the art of listening. It's very inspiring to explore the shadows of masculinity and femininity, and the tensions between both, and the place of women in the world right now. ”

2001: A Space Odyssey' is a movie that really impressed me as a teenager. And also 'Blade Runner.' And 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' is also one of my favorites. I'm always looking for sci-fi material, and it's difficult to find original and strong material that's not just about weaponry. ”

A longstanding dream of mine is to adapt 'Dune,' but it's a long process to get the rights, and I don't think I will succeed. ”

I was a sci-fi addict when I was a kid and a teenager. Novels, graphic novels, movies, it was my way to deal with reality. ”

When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story. ”

In a way, the truth is that I was dreaming to do a movie in the United States just because, as a filmmaker, I always loved the idea of trying to make movies in a different culture, in a different way. It's always interesting to make a movie abroad. ”

The thing is that when you are a director, you need to be involved in a lot of different fields. You must be a psychologist, an architecture expert; you must be a choreographer. ”

Arrival' talks very little about language and how to precisely dissect a foreign language. It's more a film on intuition and communication by intuition, the language of intuition. ”

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. ”

Making poetry with a camera - that's the essence of what I do. ”