I don't have storyboards, but I have some very strict rules, like not moving the camera.

I had good parents. Nothing terrible happened. But I had the feeling that they kind of protected me from reality somehow.

When I was a child, I had a quiet, protected childhood.

I'm very interested in talking about children in this moment where you are going to become a teenager, and I think it's very relevant to use a fairy tale to talk about that.

What is very exciting with children is they like to play, and they don't care so much about the meanings [of things], and they are just excited to have weird scenes to do or weird things to do, like playing deaf, or playing sick, or swimming in the water.

I think sometimes there are films where I understand what they are about, but there are also some mysterious areas in the film where I haven't got the whole image and I haven't got everything. And then it stays much longer with me, because I have to somehow put myself much more into the film to get it. And so this is what I'm trying to do with my films.

I try to simplify things for the children.