78 Quotes by Joshua Oppenheimer

My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.

What I've always been most interested in is exposing the way stories and fantasies reconstitute our everyday reality. What appears to be non-fiction is not only totally mysterious, unfathomable, and strange when you really look at what it is.

My first memory of cinema is my mother taking me to see 'Silkwood,' which is about a whistleblower at a nuclear power plant.

I'm against escapist entertainment.

I don't like to eat when I watch films because it distracts me. Anything crunchy or in a wrapper is terrible.

I don't drink in the cinema because I have a bladder the size of a hummingbird.

We all identify with the people we see, and in a good documentary, we are not just reading an account of the world, we're seeing and hearing our world.

In calling someone a bad guy, I reassure myself that I'm good. I elevate myself. I call it the 'Star Wars morality'. And unfortunately, it underpins most of the stories we tell.

I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction.