There's a tradition of reenactment in documentary which is about sort of illustrating what the past might have been like.
Joshua OppenheimerI think we create our world through stories. We use storytelling to escape or protect ourselves from the unimaginable and the horrible - from the real, in a way. It's like white light - if you put everyday reality through a prism you get this rainbow of colors that you couldn't see before. I'm interested in exploring the world to show the things that are invisible. And not just undocumented aspects of reality, but to actually make manifest things that have been hitherto invisible through the intervention of filmmaking.
Joshua OppenheimerA podium is something you walk up to, you say what you want to say and when you're finished, you leave.
Joshua OppenheimerI need to trust myself and go where my instincts tell me, and to be as wild and free as possible in my creative decisions.
Joshua OppenheimerEach and every perpetrator was boastful, usually they would invite me to the places where they killed and I would of course accept those invitations because I could document what happened that way.
Joshua OppenheimerI believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction. If you acknowledge that filming is an occasion where people express things they might not otherwise express, that offers a much more insightful analysis of why documentaries - even of the fly-on-the-wall variety - are powerful. I think that our task as filmmakers is to create the most insightful reality given the most pressing questions.
Joshua Oppenheimer