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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

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Elia Suleiman
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: July 28
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More quotes by Elia Suleiman

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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
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It's a false illusion that we wake up thinking of who we are in terms of identity and that we are stuck in the boundaries of who we are nationalistically.
Elia Suleiman
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I don't think there should be a Palestinian state because I don't believe in states.
Elia Suleiman
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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
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I think that whatever we express in terms of the potential truth is above all else about mobilizing ourselves for ourselves. We learn about ourselves as individuals. Identification with Palestine is universal and not restricted to geographic boundaries. It's a question of moral and ethical positions vis-à-vis all the injustices that surround us.
Elia Suleiman
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I am more at peace than I've ever known myself to be. My connectedness to the world is more intense. I am more attentive to the humanity around me.
Elia Suleiman
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People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can't catch it, can't control it. They prefer coherence, what's blunt and has clarity.
Elia Suleiman
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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
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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
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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
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There are a lot of questions that come out of the silence. It is so close to the infinite.
Elia Suleiman
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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
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Palestine is about how we drink the water, whether we are being ecological or not. Palestine is our way of exercising our daily living. That's what's going to solve the problem of Palestine. It's also how we think of ourselves spiritually. This kind of disconnectedness is harmful to the person who is acting that way and is sometimes annoying.
Elia Suleiman
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Living more intensely, more lovingly, with more camaraderie, that is in itself resistance.
Elia Suleiman
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It's crucial to choose your work place - some places lend themselves to you and others don't.
Elia Suleiman
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I don't think you can strategize to be poetic and neither can you strategize to be funny. It is not a tool, it is itself - it comes from the moment, from the character, from the background, from the streets.
Elia Suleiman
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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
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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
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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