20 Quotes by Juan Antonio Bayona

Music is very helpful, not just for the actors, but the whole crew and myself. It gives you the tone of the scene. Everyone is focused on the tone of the scene when we are shooting, and we are having an emotional reaction to the music immediately.

I had a very happy childhood.

I think your behavior is different when you work on digital or film. It seems that... I feel most focused if I'm working on film.

You're watching the movie for the first time when you're working with the actors in front of the camera. You don't think about how the audience will react. You discover the film.

When you're portraying a tough situation, you have to show some of the things in there.

The good thing about helping an actor create a performance is, you really don't know how you're going to do it. It's a challenge every time you get to the set. That keeps the energy flowing all the time.

With actors, it's really about feeding them all the time. I don't get involved in their process. I try to do the opposite, feeding them, feeding them, feeding them, and you can see very easily how they react to it.

There is a company in Barcelona called Headless, and I was a huge fan. I love their style. I had been trying to work with them for years. 'A Monster Calls' was the perfect project to work on with them.

There is not a great Spanish tradition of ghost stories. But in the period of Franco, you'd find these ghost stories: sort of hidden political movies that were supposed to be about ghosts but were about something else.