Gavin Hood Quotes (14 Quotes)

Without what you did, we would not have been able to make this film together as South Africans in a free country.

My parents have been car-jacked. I have been mugged. We all know what it is like. But do you write a story about the way it is, or the way it should, or could, or needs to be

When you make a little film without stars and not in English, you just hope you get into international festivals, so we didn't know if we'd get accepted in competition in Edinburgh or Toronto. Each one seemed to bring attention to the film to audiences around the world. We originally just wanted it to play in London, New York and Los Angeles like most small films do.

You don't want to make a big deal out of it because it sounds indulgent. But the fact of the matter is that, for all South African filmmakers, because we don't make a lot of films, you feel an unrealistic pressure that your film has to say so much and has to be about everything in South Africa.

Although it seems to be a ghetto movie, it very quickly becomes a much more intimate story, the story of this young, teenage, lost, crazy, out-of-control kid and a baby that he hides from his friends.

It's when the subject makes eye contact with you, and there's that tiny moment of challenge, of vulnerability or sudden aggression or confusion or insecurity. You construct the movie out of those moments that happen between lines and beneath the lines, and then you're very lucky to have actors like Presley and Terry, who can deliver those very subtle moments in characters that don't say a huge amount.

We arranged a meeting in Los Angeles with big name stars, but I had to drop the idea. I wanted to film in the local Soweto dialect that only Soweto youth can speak and believed that shooting in any other language would dilute the impact of the film.

This may sound melodramatic but I have never, ever worked so hard. The film will be released in a different country every week for the next six weeks. I've just come back from Germany, France and Sweden to be in LA for the nominations and to speak to the American press.

I'm in Los Angeles, and like almost everyone in this crazy business of ours, I watched on TV bleary-eyed. Being the last film to be announced in the category, my heart was pounding. One isn't quite prepared for something like this.

I want to thank my fellow nominees, who I've become deep friends with. We may have foreign-language films, but our stories are the same as your stories. They're about the human heart and emotion.

One of the struggles and one of the exciting things for South African filmmakers is What stories are we allowed to tell I hope for the industry that more and more, it will tell whatever stories it likes.

We grew up watching American films and I hope that Americans will watch our stories.

I was frozen in my seat. It was the first time I had ever seen people like me on the screen.

We had 12 films coming out of South Africa last year, whereas a few years ago we made one or two a year.