Top 30 Celine Sciamma Quotes

When I turned 13 all of my life was designed around earning money to buy cinema tickets.

A kid is always locked down inside their family. In the film, I felt like talking about loss and death, which we’ve had a lot of right now, but you know, the experience of lockdown maybe gave me more courage to believe we could create cinema while all locked in our houses.

I think my movies are very much about the female gaze… But it’s not going to happen magically if you’re a woman. It’s still something you have to deconstruct, but it’s not something you have to be vigilant about.

Working with young actors is really going with trust. I never see them act beforehand. Because that’s not their job. It’s my job to make it happen on set.

We all have to deconstruct the looks in ourselves. It’s easier if you see different cultures and different imagery than just the pure straight male gaze and that you’re aware that images are political. Not everybody is.

Lady Gaga is not saying anything new, she’s just quoting something that’s already been said, and staging it. It rarely seems sincere. That’s why I always try to say something authentic.

Well, regarding actors, my idol is Catherine Deneuve, but not in relation to my work, I’m just a fan. As far as genres, I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction, and I would love to make a fantastic film.

When I made my first film I was 25 years old, and that’s pretty rare. Being so young my experience and the thing that I wanted to talk about was teenagehood, plus in France we have that strong tradition of the coming-of-age story being made as your first film.

I was kind of a tomboy when I was the age of the character. I could be mistaken for a boy – sometimes I found it cool and sometimes I found it hard, but I remember the excitement.

We’re always being told that there’s a linear progress regarding women. It only gets better, especially for women artists. It’s not true.

I identify myself with the male gaze, I grew up with the male gaze, I’ve been excited by the male gaze. I’m a product of that culture.

I’m not a big Avengers person. I don’t have a lot of that culture. But you can totally enjoy ‘WandaVision’ without having that.

Shooting with kids you only have three hours on set per day, so you have to know what you want. You have maybe four or five takes to get a scene.

Ninety per cent of what we look at is the male gaze. They don’t see themselves anymore.

As a screenwriter, you’re always being told: a good scene is one where somebody wants something, the other one doesn’t want to give it.

So I guess with females, it should be acknowledged that we’re more hybrid. We can be anything. Maybe we’re more free to create.

To me synchronised swimming is a metaphor for the job of being a girl. They have to fake their smiles, they’re made up like dolls and they can’t show the effort they’re making, yet under the surface of the water it’s a struggle and a sacrifice.

We are always told that with women’s rights and opportunities for women there’s been constant progress, and it isn’t true. It works in cycles.

Films made by women belong to the history of cinema; it’s just that we get erased pretty quickly.

The cinema should offer new images, create new memories.

I’m always embarrassed when I’m asked about meaning, because it is what you make it. The meaning is yours, so it’s not about what I think. It’s for us all to reflect and change perspectives.

I like the sensitive look of traditional French films and the fact that the children are often portrayed as rebels, but I also like the way the American tradition stylises everything and is full of fantasy around childhood.

I do not want to belong to cinema history. I am a woman – I know I’m doomed anyway.

The dream of the theater for for me is that it’s a room full of adults and kids. I want kids and grownups to be totally focused on the same object.

I always wish for the audience to feel less lonely when they leave the room. To have the film as a companion, as a shelter for themselves.

Well, I think I’m trying to be in the middle of two traditions, the French tradition, which is about being fair and staying close to reality, and the American tradition which is about making up a stylized universe, made of shapes and colors.

It’s always a balance between something that touches you intimately and something that you think is going to be generous – I like to find intimate, subtle subjects and bring them into strong story telling.

I decided to put cinema at the centre of my life when I was 13 and going through the biggest crisis of my life: teenagehood.

Really, with ‘Water Lilies’, the project was to end the movie where other movies would begin.

Love educates us about art. Art consoles us from lost love. Our great loves are a condition of our future love.