58 Quotes by Raoul Peck

You face the reality, whether it's hopeful or hopeless. What's your alternative? To lie down and die?

I came back to Haiti after the earthquake not to shoot a film, but to help and be a part of the rebuilding process, like all my fellow compatriots. I didn't come to shoot a film, but I became frustrated when I realized that my help was kind of useless. We all felt lost and helpless. And it's out of that frustration that I decided to shoot a film.

Only if you were lucky to be born in the right class, the one Donald Trump was born in, then of course you have a beautiful view of the world. You find that everybody else is an imbecile, because he doesn't think like you, he doesn't dress like you, he doesn't have the same girl as you, etc. But I call that ignorance.

If there is something that determines my motivation in the work I do, it's the sense of injustice.

I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.

Film is carrying a lot of ideology. It's carrying an image. It's forging an image not only of the rest of the world, but also of yourself, you know.

I never wanted to be current in the sense that I follow the news, I follow the historical moment of the day. It was always, for me, to go back to the fundamentals.

We forget that everything has a meaning, everything has an impact on you. It's what we call soft power today. Nothing is innocent.

I remember a time when you were protesting on the street together with your professors, with your union, with your school organizations. Everybody was in the streets. Now, everybody is kept alone in his box, in this fragile condition, afraid of losing tenure.