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

I know people could tell incredible stories. People have been in concentration camps, or women being raped, or a man going to war and not recovering from it. People have been robbed and beaten. A lot of people have had strong events in their life, which I didn't.

It's a way of living, cinema. And I see my family, I do this and that, I travel. It's a long process to let it happen.

We need to find another way or another shape or an allegory or something that tells us more. Even Vagabond - it was a fiction but it was really a documentary. I mean, it has the texture of documentary. Even if I made up every line, it has the texture of being true.

In my films I always wanted to make people see deeply. I don't want to show things, but to give people the desire to see.

I just didn't see films when I was young. I was stupid and naïve. Maybe I wouldn't have made films if I had seen lots of others; maybe it would have stopped me.

The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world .