Elia Suleiman Quotes & Sayings

If a person just takes what is socio-political and geographical from the themes of my films then that's not enough. But if the person goes out of the theatre and, for example, makes the dinner he's eating later on, extra nice then I feel that I have succeeded. We have this urge to anaesthetize the moment we're living in. — Elia Suleiman

I don't want what you see on the screen to just be a brief notion of pleasure but something that lingers. The idea is to have the images revisited. I want it to be something that also enhances the soul. I want the moment of pleasure to produce an attachment. — Elia Suleiman

I'm trying to use Palestine as a microcosm of the world, but maybe the world is a microcosm of Palestine. We're living in a moment that has lost attachment to the ideology behind boundaries. — Elia Suleiman

The problem is that when you grow absolutely certain that all authorities are corrupt, then that would include the Palestinian authorities as well. — Elia Suleiman

I'm not in the business of saying just one thing about just one place. If you only see Palestine in my films, then I've failed because then I'm just a provincial filmmaker. — Elia Suleiman

I try to use fiction in order to reduce the potentiality of something being true. We produce our own memories so I'm not sure of truth. — Elia Suleiman

I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states. — Elia Suleiman

Palestine is an extremely familiar place to me. Someone like me who lives everywhere in the world cannot be contained. If my hope and ambitions are in the right place, you can judge that in my films. I want to make films that diffuse any local notion. Cinema criss-crosses borders and check points. If the film is good, then it's universal. — Elia Suleiman

The Time that Remains is a way of interpreting a certain ambience or emotion. These are the stories that my father told me over the course of fifteen or twenty years. I used to listen to him. From the cowardly part of my character, I'm always in fear of not telling the right story. I'm not interested in making epics. — Elia Suleiman

I don't particularly have a good memory. I think history is many times just the text written by the victors. I wanted to counter that aspect. — Elia Suleiman

I don't really know what people's perception about Palestinians.All art is to better life. We want to create hope and share with others. Create more pleasure, and object to despair. Really it's about that. A space where we can be less aggressed upon. — Elia Suleiman

A lot of narrative films leave you no space for anything else but eating popcorn. I want to go in the complete opposite direction. I have to evacuate all psychology, to be less a protagonist and more a presence. — Elia Suleiman

It's important for me to not historicize. I work to diffuse the issue of identity and to intensify identification. You have to lose your authority in the making of a film to achieve this. The film is about me being absolutely dislocated. I focus on the very personal to arrive at the very political. — Elia Suleiman