Last King of Scotland, The (2006) - Kevin Macdonald

Djonjo: [to Nicholas] Go home and tell the truth about Amin. They will believe you. You are the white man.

Idi Amin: [to crowd at rally] I know who you are and what you are. I am you!

Idi Amin: You came to Africa to play the white man. But we aren't a game. We're real. This room is real. And when you die, it will be the first real thing you have done.

Volver (2006) - Pedro Almodóvar

Excerpts from an interview:

Q: Women are a constant in your films – why?
A: I did films with men like Bad Education, that have only men in them, and also Law of Desire, where Carmen Maura played a man. But it’s true that women tend to be at the centre of my movies. I don’t know why. Probably because women are also more interesting as a subject to develop a story about. I wouldn’t say that women and men have different problems; they have the same problems, they have the same joys and they have to also suffer the same things. But I think women have more freedoms to express their feelings and emotions.

They are less shy and have less prejudice too. I think women can surprise us much better, probably because for centuries women were forced to live in silence in the shadows. So they have that capacity to surprise us much more. I find them more interesting as a subject matter to develop a story. When I started writing the script of Volver, I knew I wanted to write only about a female universe. And because this film is related to the memory from my childhood… when I grew up, I was surrounded by women: men were not there.

Excerpted from http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/volver-pedro-almodovar-interview

The Axe (2005) - Costa-Gavras

"I've had people tell me that films I've made have changed their lives. It's a very frightening idea and I do not think it can be true. Perhaps a film can catalyze something that has been waiting for expression. I make films to tell stories. If I believed film could change lives, I would be afraid to make them."

"Le Couperet is interesting in several ways," says Costa-Gavras. "First of all, there is no historical remoteness for the audience to use as a distancing tool. Only the satire mediates the intimacy of this tale. I'm frequently surprised by how people react to the film. People leave glad that Davert's plan has not been uncovered even though it goes against every possible system of morality and ethics. It is perhaps a sign of how far down certain roads we have travelled as a culture."

"What interested me in the book was to realize that liberalism, without brakes, and almost without laws, has become common. Fifteen years ago, it concerned only the United States; but today, it concerns the Europeans as well. To put it simply, I would say that we make economy surge ahead, to the detriment of humans."

My Best Fiend - Klaus Kinski (1999) - Werner Herzog

Kinski on critics: "I was not excellent! I was not extraordinary! I was monumental! I was epochal!"

Herzog: "Every grey hair on my head, I call Kinski."

Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (1993)

One of Shyam Benegal's best films - one in which he has experimented a lot, and successfully so. A narrator tells of another narrator who tells stories of love, with different shades, with a clear distinction between the way male and female protagonists deal with love. The stories are intertwined, with the narrator also getting involved - sometimes as an observer, sometimes as a protagonist himself. The same events get depicted from different perspectives in different stories. A superb sense of environment and mood, unlike that found in most Indian films.

The Phantom of Liberty (1974) - Luis Buñuel

One of a group of monks drinking, using religious relics as poker chips: "I'll open with a virgin"

"Everyone is always someone else's barbarian."

“Chance governs all things; necessity, which is far from having the same purity, comes only later. If I have a soft spot for any one of my movies, it would be for The Phantom of Liberty, because it tries to work out just this theme.” (Buñuel, 1983)

The Edukators (2004) - Hans Weingartner

'If you're under 30 and not a liberal, you've got no heart. If you're over 30 and still a liberal, you've got no brains.'

Cantata (1963) - Miklós Jancsó

If you are blinded by the Sun, don't blame the Sun; blame your eyes.

A doctor undergoes a spiritual crisis when caught between a co-operative, communist ideal in which a group is more important than the individual, and very strong individuals that seem to contradict this ideal. Echoes of Antonioni's La Notte.

Zardoz (1974) - John Boorman

"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived 300 years, and long to die. But death is no longer possible; I am immortal. I present now my story - full of mystery and intrigue. Rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep within a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred. But they may! Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale I am a fake god by occupation, and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero! I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business too?"

Not the best John Boorman film perhaps, but the tongue-in-cheek humour amidst all the philosophizing seems to parody its high-handed, stylized, overrated, cult, sci-fi pre-cursor - '2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and can even serve as a parody of stupider things to come - such as Star Wars (1977).

Shame (1968) - Ingmar Bergman

'What do you think will happen when the person who has dreamed us wakes up and is ashamed of his dream?'