There was something, which was the turning point: I felt very strongly that women were sexualized, and perceived like they are sexual in every move, and it started off really early.

Any advice I could give to female directors would be the same as for males: There will be endless difficulties, some seemingly defeating, on your way. That's a given. Just wipe out the very notion of stress. Concentrate on your actors. Obsess about your story and the world it is anchored in. Deal with the hundreds of down-to-earth issues [around] the existence of your film. At some point, everything will be ripe. And you wouldn't be able to stop your film from coming to life even if you wanted to.

It wouldn't have existed without France, and it's a French initiative. As a filmmaker, I owe everything to France - I got accepted at a French film school that takes six directors a year. Once you're in, you make films under the eye of people in the industry. You grow up in front of their eyes.

The foreign-language Oscar is something that doesn't go to the producer or the director; it goes to the country.

I didn't want to do casting in a way that you find yourself in a situation where there's this perfect girl for a part and you just can't cast her because the family says no.

If you are not a New Yorker, when you arrive there for the first time you have the impression you grew up there because you've seen it in so many films. It's been filmed from every single angle and by so many different filmmakers that you know the streets, the sidewalks, the architecture, the cabs, the temper of the people.

There's something about all the people who are on a mission for purity and chastity, which I find very questionable.