Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work. Just yesterday I saw a good film, but even if I'd seen a bad one, I'd feel, "Oh my god, what a bad job, I can do better."

Gleaning is getting things that are abandoned. I did not abandon my early pictures, my photos, my early films. It's just going through my body of work as something I can pick from.

When I did the first edit of Les plages, it was very dry and very square in a way. I was just saying the minimum. I said, Well, if this is the minimum, I don't make it. So I tried to make it more refined. I tried to find images, allegorical images, that I could use to express things that I didn't want to say or didn't want to show or I was not able to find how to show.

I'm not interested in seeing a film just made by a woman - not unless she is looking for new images.

You have to be strong to be a carpenter, maybe, but the director of a film doesn't need to have muscles.

I didn't go to film school. I was never an assistant or trainee on a film. I had not seen all those cameras. So I think it gave me a lot of freedom.

I've always been like this - trying to find adventure where it's still in its first élan - the first spring.