Quotes

Basically, all my films are about people trying to avoid losing face.

[on The Square (2017)] I don't think I'm pointing at other people, I'm pointing at the academic middle-class that I'm part of. Many of the scenes were made with the goal of, "We'll have a film in Competition at Cannes - we'll have an audience sitting there in tuxedos, looking at this guy in a tuxedo digging in the trash." I always try to use the movies as a mirror of myself and of the social group that I belong to.

[speaking about The Square (2017) at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival] I've been travelling around going to many museums for contemporary art and there's an expression that's called "in the white cube" when it comes to contemporary art, and you walk into a room and then there's like a couple of piles of gravel of the ground and then there's a couple of mirrors and that's actually what you meet when you go to those museums, so I think it made the art pieces even more trivial. We're trying to attack that world a little bit and make them ask questions about what are we doing. Is this really in contact with the world that is outside the walls of the museum or are we just doing things out of a routine? Do we need to question this convention on what we are doing? I think we can attack also our own world - we can attack the cinema world and ask ourselves questions on what we are doing. Are we doing it out of ritual and do we break through that convention and do we actually say something that is important and interesting or are we just playing roles?

[press conference for Triangle of Sadness (2022) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival] We wanted to create like a rollercoaster for adults, and something that is entertaining and challenging and funny and to really use the cinema for what it should be used for - to have an experience together, and when you leave the cinema afterwards, you should be like, "What has happened?" And you have something to talk about.

[on the death of Charlbi Dean] It was a tragedy, first of all, for her family and her fiancé, Luke. But it was also, of course, very sad for the people that was working with the production. And I hope there's a way of trying to make the audience look at her performance and try to pay tribute to her performance.

[on Triangle of Sadness (2022)] I'm interested in our reactions when we're spoiled. For example, when I fly, I behave differently according to whether I'm in business class or economy class. In business class, I sit there, I read more slowly and I drink more slowly whilst looking at the passengers heading towards economy class. It's almost impossible not to be affected by privilege.