Michael Haneke Quotes

Germany, Film Director
March 23, 1942

Michael Haneke is an Austrian film director and screenwriter best known for films such as Funny Games 1997, Caché 2005, The White Ribbon 2009 and Amour 2012. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. Besides working as a filmmaker, Haneke also teaches film direction at the Film Academy Vienna.

Also known as Screenwriter

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

Michael Haneke
And I don't believe that children are innocent. In fact, no one seriously believes that. Just go to a playground and watch the kids playing in the sandbox! The romantic notion of the sweet child is simply the parents projecting their own wishes.

Michael Haneke
- Believe
- Kids
- Parents

I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug.

Michael Haneke
- Situation
- Industry
- Films
I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears with my work. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

Michael Haneke
- Create
- Privilege
- Fears
I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.

Michael Haneke
Writers and filmakers, that is, people who describe the world, suffer from an occupational disease. They never experience moments in life quite spontaneously. You always look at yourself from the outside. Even as a child I always observed myself and the world. I believe that everyone who chooses this path in any way, who chooses to be a describer of life, suffers from this condition. It's like a mental obsession. It can be a great pity too. It robs you of a certain joy in spontaneity.

Michael Haneke
I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers с spoon-fed images.

Michael Haneke
An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

Michael Haneke
- Artist
- Answers
- Questions

Mainstream cinema raises questions only to immediately provide an answer to them, so they can send the spectator home reassured. If we actually had those answers, then society would appear very different from what it is.

Michael Haneke
Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

Michael Haneke
- Film
- Express
- Complex