I don't believe in making movies to cater to a foreign audience. You never know what the reaction is going to be anyhow. At the time I made Maborosi, the Japanese movies getting any foreign attention were all period dramas… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share
But then foreign critics right away made sweeping comparisons to haiku, noh theater, and directors like Ozu, as if the movie were somehow representative… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut,… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share
One of the more problematic aspects of the current state of cinema in Japan is that the movies playing in the theaters are by… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
In order to avoid sentimentality and to be able to write the screenplay with the kind of humor and irony necessary to keep the… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
I don't believe in making movies to cater to a foreign audience. You never know what the reaction is going to be anyhow. At the time I made Maborosi, the Japanese movies getting any foreign attention were all period dramas and seemed to be about some representative element of Japanese life, and my movie was contemporary movie about one specific… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share
I did want to become a novelist, but the program at Waseda was pretty intense in terms of language requirements - two hours of… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
As far as documentaries go, I believe unreservedly that they serve an important function in our culture. I'd love to be able to make… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
The contemporary Japanese directors who are well-known in the West - say, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase - are mostly unknown to Japanese,… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
The biggest considerations I had were practical: how do you move such a large number of actors around a small space? So, for example,… — Hirokazu Koreeda Copy Share Image
