“Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a ...” — Joshua Oppenheimer Quote

“Once you recognize that all documentaries are performance, it's not a matter of 'if' they should be performance. They are performance, and they are performance precisely where people are playing themselves.”

“What makes art powerful is a flash of recognition, a frightening encounter with something familiar about the human condition.”

“My background is in filmmaking, and my mentor is Dusan Makavejev, who combined fiction and documentary.”

“In calling someone a bad guy, I reassure myself that I'm good. I elevate myself. I call it the 'Star Wars morality'. And unfortunately, it underpins most of the stories we tell.”

“Waking from any fever dream, one retains, above all, impressions seared into memory.”

“My father's family was mostly obliterated in the Holocaust, and I grew up very much with the sense that the central moral and political question is how do we prevent these things from happening again.”

“There's so many documentaries out there right now and everything's exposing wrestling.”

“Documentaries can provoke much more than narrative movies.”

“I watch documentaries for information. I watch films to be entertained.”

“When I'm actually making a film and trying to find solutions, I like to watch making-of documentaries about huge films, like 'Gladiator.' That couldn't be more apart from what I'm doing, but you see Ridley Scott facing huge problems and fixing them.”

“I'm primarily an actor and only make documentaries when I see a story others have missed.”

“I had heard a lot of key words about Harshad Mehta in books, documentaries, on the Internet, and in the script like his passion, greed, a bit of ego, and confidence.”