Barry Jenkins Quotes

6 Sourced Quotes

While the emotional tone of 'Moonlight' is at turns melancholic and muted, the imagery counteracts the drama in our goal of a saturated, sharp-lensed depiction of Miami, a visual language that embraces color and light as motivating tools that can subtly enhance the emotions and themes of the film.

Barry Jenkins
When this is all done, I am going to open my notebook [on the next project] and you know what is going to be there: a blank page. And it is going to take the same amount of work to fill it as on this one. As a writer, a blank page will humble the hell out of you. It always does and it always will.

Barry Jenkins
"Moonlight" is a story that hasn't been told. Whether placed as queer black cinema or urban male cinema, the lack of coming of age films [...] and set in places like inner-city Miami is pronounced and unfortunate. While it would be glib to say this lack makes the film an inherently important story to tell, it would be factual to frame it thusly: people like our characters exist.

Barry Jenkins
The way I grew up, I was kind of a quiet kid. I ended up watching people a lot, more than interacting, in a certain way. And I think you can learn a lot more about people when they're not speaking than you can when they're speaking. People say, Oh, you can learn more by actions than statements. But I do think that when people are in repose, you really see beneath the surface.

Barry Jenkins
Of his film Moonlight (2016):
I was proud of the film. I thought we had done good work. But I have friends who've made really great work which no-one ever sees – so you never know how that is going to play out.

Barry Jenkins
You have this character who is sort of receding inside himself. And the music within the film tells us what he can't. In the beginning it starts out very, very small. Once you get to that third story, the music [the actual soundtrack] starts to get a lot more expressive and sensual.

Barry Jenkins