For me, the most important word in cinema is the word freedom. For example, in Europe, we've got freedom, we've got the final cut and that's something which is marvellous.

It's always been pretty easy for me to exercise my imagination. The other part of the brain, the one that does mathematics, is a nightmare for me. It doesn't work at all.

I think of a film as being like a toy train.

In Hollywood everything is formatted, everything is compulsory, so therefore we have to follow the law of benefits and profit and money, let us say the law of Hollywood.

It's always more interesting and more difficult to make something positive than negative. To be negative is very easy.

There is a new philosophy for weapons: it's more expensive to hurt people than to kill people. It's terrible. When you have a band of guys on the battlefield, if someone is dead, he's dead. If someone is injured then they have to take care of him, so six people are busy.

I like the cinema of people like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton. I am not keen on trying to reproduce reality - for that you should do documentaries.