I said if I made 10 films in my life, I would be very lucky. That's how I meant it. My fear after my first one was whether they would let me make another one, so I had this goal in my head.

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

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.

I was kind of surprised that, about 99 percent of the people grabbed the thing [in Valerian].You know it's their thing. And I'm very impressed by that.

It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before.

I wanted to prove that I could do something, so I made a short film. That was in fact my main concern, to be able to show that I could do one.

I have like 10 actors and 100 aliens in the film [Valerian]. And they come from the four corners of the universe. Some of them are liquid. Some of them are just [so visually] crazy.