Zhang Ziyi Quotes

I think my sweet spot is to make personal films on not-too-big budgets and also make other people's films, bringing productions to Iceland, upping the business here.

I'd like to do one European film a year.

In the beginning, it wasn't even a question of deciding I'm going to do independent film and not commercial films - I wasn't being offered any commercial films, and there wasn't an independent scene.

I am not ready to fit into the mould of commercial cinema.

I don't know about the whole song-and-dance thing. But if India will have me, the independent cinema scene there is something I'm really interested in.

The great thing I think when you do independents is that people are really there for the same reason. They're not there because they got a lot of money and they want to just go home and get it over with. They're there because they believe in the script or the director or the cast or whatever it is, and they want to make it work.

With independent film, as an actor, you have more involvement - it's very much more connected. It's not just like I'm showing up and there's another actor on the call sheet; you're very attached to it.

People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.

I've been fortunate to work with some amazing Asian filmmakers in independent film.

I want to make films with a broad scope; produced in Italy but looking at the world.

When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.

I was lucky enough to come in at the beginning of the independent film movement, and it's really shaped my life and my career.

I'm about to go to Sundance for my 3rd year, and Sundance has never felt like a real independent festival at all. On the other hand, it might to start feel that way.

I don't really want to do the Hollywood thing. I think you ought to try to say something with your movies.

I find the stuff that is exciting to me are the films coming out of Taiwan and Iran and France. So I have the feeling I'm not making the films that American distributors want to make.

In Quebec, we're less inhibited artistically, culturally, politically. We're less focused on box office and comparing our films to the American films.

I had not starred in an independent film and it's about a woman who owned a hair salon.

I believe that independent film making is the last frontier of creative expression available. So I'm always willing to lend a helping hand to a young film maker who's just getting into the business.

I did a film which was considered an independent movie with Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia called Confidence, and that's the type of film I was willing to take a chance on that because of the caliber of people involved with the film.

Sometimes you find that there is better material in small and more independent movies. There's more risk-taking.

I think it's important to do smaller films because I think that's where a lot of new things are happening.

If you want to make movies you need to think on a micro-micro level and figure out how to make them for nothing with people who really care about your movie and really want to make it.

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.

I think a smart person today realizes that you have to be part of the art films that are done just for the sake of the art.

The lifeblood of my career has been independent film.