- [at TED2013] Problems are hidden opportunities, and constraints can actually boost creativity. If people tell you it's impossible, it's an even better reason to want to do it. People have a tendency to see the problem rather than the final result. If you treat the problems as possibilities, life will start to dance with you in the most amazing ways.
- [at TED2013, speaking of Mars and April (2012)] I made a film that was impossible to make, only I didn't know it was impossible. This is the kind of movie I wanted to make ever since I was a kid, reading comic books.
- [in The Canadian Press, October 26, 2011] The biggest help that Denis gave me was not to help me. He really does his own thing and he's really protective of his own universe, in a good way. He never went into my area... Doing a science fiction film... is not something that Denis did, so it's something very personal. When you're facing an investor or the institutions or a distributor, it's you yourself with your own ideas and your own project. Even if somebody in your family is successful, it doesn't change anything. On the contrary, I suppose people expect more of you in certain ways. Certainly as a child, probably he had an unconscious positive effect in the sense that (I saw) it was possible to do. To see somebody older than you in your own family that does that is already a pretty powerful influence.
- [at TED2013] When you don't have money, you must take time. And it took me seven years to make Mars and April (2012).
- [on Mars and April (2012)] That I was able to create a cohesive world and tell a poetic story using sci-fi, without any violence. That is a new idea, and I'm proud of that. It isn't a perfect movie, which is the curse of a first film. Coppola [Francis Ford Coppola] said in a workshop I saw that "What people hate you for, is what they will praise you for in 20 years. It's your voice, it makes you unique. So if you get depressed about it, you lose an opportunity to grow." [2016]
- When we pitched Red Ketchup (2023) to Teletoon," says Red Ketchup series director Martin Villeneuve, "it was the first time in my life that after an hour and a half of pitching that they said 'we want the project and we want it like this, like you just pitched it', and this for a creator is the best thing you can ever hear because you know that you are going to be supported by the production team, by the broadcaster. We all want to do the same show.
- [on Les 12 travaux d'Imelda (2022)] It is ironic that a film our institutions declined to support, and one that is impossible to produce within the current system, happened to be the opening film of this festival. Without films, my friends, there would be no festivals. Let us begin by assisting small independent filmmakers in bringing these creations to life. [...] The bureaucratic entanglement surrounding cinema in Quebec has become suffocating to the point where one feels overwhelmed before even putting a single word on paper. Everything seems to be designed to discourage creators and favor bureaucrats, with the love of cinema no longer factored into this governmental equation.
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