I feel it’s important to talk about the complex issues affecting us. And these are complex issues. I think it’s insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.

I tend to jot down moments, lines, interactions that don't really make any sense. I try and explain these scattered notes to my close friends, and they become more and more logical. I see screenwriting as a bit like a math equation which I have to solve.

It was important to me to make a film where I don't show the past but where the spectators can see the past.

The fact that I do place music at the end of my films is not to accentuate the emotion. It serves an opposite purpose which is to remove them from the emotional space and allow them to enter a space of thinking, because I believe that when the audience is watching the film they're watching it with their feelings.

It's been interesting to see how similar audiences in the East and West are, actually, and how it makes you realize that when politicians emphasize the differences between our cultures, it's usually because it benefits them more so than us.

Classical tragedy was the war between good and evil. We wanted evil to be defeated and good to be victorious. But the battle in modern tragedy is between good and good. And no matter which side wins, we'll still be heartbroken.

When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works.