I think the arts should get big support, but my country has a lot of needs more important than film. Medication, education, food... The poverty is overwhelming. There are simply more important things to be attended to.

All people know that they will die, but they don't actually believe it.

I never deny a true experience in one shot.

There's nothing better than being in a film that translates to audiences and makes people think and feel good and walk away with great revelations in their own life of some kind. But when the process and the experience and the fun of that matches, it's a good feeling.

Of course, there's always one theater that shows some kind of European film. Now, fortunately, you have DVDs, so it's possible to get anything you want within a few hours. In those days, it was virtually impossible to get Italian films, or German films, or whatever. So I grew up with very standard, mainstream films.

I just wanted to show the migrants as complex humans with flaws and weakness, with good and bad things, and show that they're parents and family men. I wanted to show them with everything, as they are.

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country.