Hany Abu-Assad Quotes

Filmmaking in general is about feeling and not about theory. You need to know a lot of rules about filmmaking: character development, grammar, and all these thing, but then you use it instinctively. I ask myself this question all the time. I have no solid theory, I just do what I feel is right.

Most of us want to live in harmony and peace and be good to others. Right now, however, the world is in a very turbulent time, and our leadership has gone crazy.

A movie should entertain you in a way that will also open your mind. I think movies are tools to enrich your experience.

I don't read the news anymore because I know it would make me depressed. So instead, I make beauty. I make movies.

Humanity has survived because the strong among us have, in the past, been obliged to help the weak. Without this, we would not survive.

As a filmmaker, you take reality and you tell a story from it.

Politics is different than movies. Politics are controlled by leaders. Leaders of every country have different interests. And they try to explain to their people why they should take one side or the other side. But in the movie its doing the opposite. It allows you to have a Universal Experience. You don't watch it as politics but as a movie. You don't have different reactions all over. It's so universal a language. It's not a political language serving a political agenda. The language of cinema is a world language. With the Hollywood movie, it brings about the same reaction wherever it goes.

As a human being, I will always feel that where there is oppression, I am with the underdog.

This is what art can do in our time. Unite people, and give them hope.

I feel like my job is to give hope. The world is in a dark place and we are living in somewhat of a nightmare. So I want to make films to give hope.

You need a visualization of the outside obstacle and what can be better than a wall. For the Palestinians it means a division from each other, because the wall didn't separate Palestinians from Israelis, it separated them from themselves. This is the reality, and the wall is a kind of jail to the Palestinians.

When I was younger, I did dark movies. It was a reflection of what I saw around me.

The casting is very simple actually, but it is very important. You choose the best actor for the role, and you test them and you test them, and you bring them back, and you have to make sure the actors fit the roles.

I like movies that deal with trapped men. Men that need to make choices that are not obvious or easy choices. Then how do you visualize this? You create this character conflicted between two sides, because drama is about the conflict of two things, between your duty and your will, between what you want and what you can't have. It is all conflict between two things, and this is why you put your character in a place where you can visualize the conflict.