Loving a film is like falling in love with a woman or with a man like you never expect it. It it's not the one you think you will be in love with, you know. You think always that he will be with a beard, and black, and big and finally he's Chinese and you know it's the same thing. There's something very organic about the film and if you forgot it, if you don't have this seed in it...this organic flavor in it the film doesn't work it's wrong.

We were so ready [with Valerian] that we were early, which is unheard of in the history of the sci-fi film.

Cinema never saved anyone's life, it is not a medicine that will save anyone's life. It is only an aspirin.

I wrote the entire history of Alpha because the space station was around for 500 years. I have 30 pages on the history of Alpha. Every ten years what happens. They took control and what happened. Every 80 years, they have to change the communication system because it doesn't work anymore. Some aliens come with new technology, and suddenly you can change the electric system. We wrote the entire story [for Valerian]

My biggest surprise is probably the level of involvement of all the artists [in Valerian] who participated at every level.

Sometimes I see people finish a film and they go, "Yeah, that was good. Where are we going to eat?"

Be humble and say okay, all right, I have to prep myself. So everybody prepped, and we finished the film [Valerian ] four days before the end.