When you make something you like and audiences reject it, the experience can be painful. But I've discovered...that when you make something you aren't exactly satisfied with, and someone tells you it's great, that's even mor...e painful and frustrating.

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

In the States, I learned to fight for every idea. Sometimes, a director has to be a tyrant to keep the quality.

This is one of the things I don't like so much about French cinema - we have tendency to concentrate on actors and dialogue and we don't care so much about the visual aspect. I love when you use all the elements at your disposal.

When I was a child, I had a ViewMaster, those red box glasses with little discs, so that you can see 3D images. They were my first steps in cinema. I was eight years old, I would cut and change the order of the images and that's how I created films that subsequently I recorded and projected and showed my friends. So I already took my first steps in 3D when I was eight years old.

I've never made any concessions, so I am 100% responsible for my films. This makes me feel very proud.

If I would want to have a huge audience, I would make American movies, not French movies, because there is a limit of course with French language. If I prefer to shoot in my own language, it is to play with my language, to play in my Paris, and I have complete freedom in France. It's so amazing. If American directors could imagine how free I am, they would have asked for political asylum immediately.