I think the beauty of images is that they are by definition fetishes and every image (banal or not) as a fetish holds within it the promise of a sensuousness that (without generalizing) at least I, as a human being, am drawn to.

I'm fascinated by how ethnic communities have assimilated into massive capitalist environments.

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

I've been lucky to play characters that are really broad.

Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

When you don't understand the fashion world you're just grateful you get to wear good clothes.

And also, that's the kind of wonderful thing about film culture, is the interaction between films and who works on what, where they were before, and now what they're doing now, and that inevitably informs how people view a film.