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Film is an artificial construct. It pretends to reconstruct reality. But it doesn't do that—it's a manipulative form. It's a lie that can reveal the truth. But if a film isn't a work of art, it's just complicit with the process of manipulation.

— Michael Haneke

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More quotes by Michael Haneke

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Today's conventional cinema, or mass cinema, doesn't take the receiver seriously as a partner. It sees the audience member as a bank machine, whose only function is to spit out money.

Consider the pigeon just a pigeon...There are lots of pigeons in Paris.

Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

My favourite film-maker of the decade is Abbas Kiarostami. He achieves a simplicity that's so difficult to attain.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Haneke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.