A Quote by Olivier Dahan

Cannes is a sort of gladiators' arena, and that's the fun part of it. When you accept to come here to open the festival, you know you are going to be criticised. I have no problem with the fact that I expose myself and the movie, and it's normal that I can disagree with the way some people feel.
Cannes is a fun festival, but some people use it as a place to smash a movie, or to destroy it.
Playing big films on festivals is SO misguided. And I know where it comes from: it comes from the head of the festival thinking that he'll play with the big guys, like that's the way to do it and it's SO not the way to do it. It's where Cannes went wrong, it's where Toronto is going wrong. I mean, I got off the plane in Cannes this year and the streets were paved with posters from studio movies. Who cares about that? Why come to Cannes for that? You're going to be able to see all those films anyway - you're not going to be able to avoid them, so I don't get it. Obviously.
I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival.
When the film [Certified Copy] was in the Cannes Festival, I realized that the fact of having it shot in a different culture, in a different language, in a different setting, that wasn't mine and that I didn't belong to, gave me a totally different relationship to the film. When I was sitting in the audience during the official screening in Cannes, I didn't feel that it was my film.
I know that I'm going out there, and I know that I am going to get hit in the head. I know that's part of football. That's like a firefighter knowing he is going to go into a fire at some point. You know you are going to be put in danger's way, and you accept that risk, and you do it.
I've sort of come to accept the fact that when I'm 80, people will ask about Michael Alig. I've had to realize that this is part of who I am.
To be able to work with people who I have respected and admired, to be a part of something like the Cannes Film Festival, is surreal and brilliant.
You get these horrifying straight-to-video things for very little money, then you go to the Cannes Film Festival, and they got some poster of you, 40 ft. high, in the worst movie in the world.
I think it's more normal to make a movie dealing with love, sexual or not, than to make movies about bank robberies, which very rarely happen in real life. So I would say the problem is not what some people feel is normal, I would say the problem is why this whole industry is far more obsessed with filming scenes of dominance, guns, invasion.
I've always been on the outside of all that political stuff so I just sort of watch it and I'm appalled and I think people should be screaming about a lot of things right now and they're not. They're just letting everything happen. I don't know. At some point the wheels are going to come off and we're going to have a real problem. The people are going to get angry and it's going to be too late.
Some people come out going, I don't get it. And I don't quite know what they're trying to get, what they're struggling for. We have had the reaction where people leave the movie sort of uncomfortable and befuddled. Although that wasn't our intention.
Sundance felt like a natural fit. I love coming here, and I do think that this festival suits my films rather than most of the festivals I've been to. I'm not going to Cannes, you know.
Most people think of a feel as when you touch something or someone and what it feels like to your fingers but, a feel can have a thousand different definitions. Sometimes feel is a mental thing. Sometimes feel can happen clear ‘cross the arena. Sort of an invitation from the horse to come to you.
My primary goal is really to get people to open up and when they feel themselves contracting and collapsing to reduce that, and to know when that happens, "Oh, something's going on that's making me feel this way, and if I force my body open a bit, I will feel less powerless."
Consequently, I get inspiration from all over the place. But it's not like a calculated thing on my part, or a way that I see myself, you know? I'm just interested in things that move me, and I don't care where they come from. In fact, I'm interested if they come from a place I wouldn't expect, or would seem foreign to me on some level.
We all are [normal]. Their idea of normal just happens to be different to some other people's idea of normal. But this is the world we live in. Some people simply cannot accept something that is outside of their experience.
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