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.

Making a film transforms your relationship to the world. And there's some sort of natural authority that builds up along the way.

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.

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

When you make a film, you come to say something.

Of course, when you work with actors and when you work on a script everything that you know about the human experience can't possibly go in.

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.