I'm trying to understand how do we tell lies to ourselves to justify what we've done and what are the consequences of those lies? But actually maybe I also recognize that in turning empathy into a practice for many years,… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
We lie to ourselves and try to escape that bitter reality by saying that the world is divided into good guys and bad guys, and that we're the good guys. We condemn people as evil to reassure us that we're… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I always have said, you know it's not for me to forgive or to condemn, I'm a filmmaker. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I think we create our world through stories. We use storytelling to escape or protect ourselves from the unimaginable and the horrible - from… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
We can distance ourselves from the reality of what we did through storytelling. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
In a fiction film, we know at some level we've suspended disbelief. In a documentary, we know that we're watching a drama unfold in… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
I really believe that the past is beyond our grasp and what is essential about the past is something unspeakable. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
Films can't change the society, they can simply open the space for the discussion which can lead to social change and can start new… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
A podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave. — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
Each and every perpetrator was boastful, usually they would invite me to the places where they killed and I would of course accept those… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
After the Dutch left Indonesia, after the Indonesians got loose in 1945, the freemen were not as widely used, but then they went through… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
The whole tradition of cinema is dominated, really, by films about good guys versus bad guys, good versus evil. But we have very few… — Joshua Oppenheimer Copy Share Image
