We with Komplizen Film believe very much in the writer-director and in the freedom of a filmmaker. I think it's always good to be involved where you spend the money. Filmmaking, you see in the picture what the money's spent for. I never had to leave a phase of filmmaking before being really happy, and that was really a big luxury. That could happen, I think, because I am my own producer.

When you direct the dialogue you can be precise, but with a song as a director you're more like a football coach. You can say one, two things in the beginning and then the actor has to follow what happens.

You can change so many things in your life, but you cannot change where you come from. It's something that you have to deal with: the role everybody plays in his family, no matter if he likes it or not.

Politically, the world economy really depends on consultants. Because it's also, in a way, an outsourcing of responsibility. They can say, "Yeah, they told us to do that," and the consultant says, "Yeah, but I'm just a consultant," and nobody's responsible anymore.

Father-daughter has a lot of layers, I find.

With every enemy, when you get closer you understand much more, or the picture dissolves.

For me, it was always clear that Toni Erdmann is more a film about what globalization, capitalism, does with private relationships much more than making a "political" film. It's more interesting to raise questions, because I don't feel in a position to "make a statement" with the film. Toni Erdmann comes from a completely different generation then his daughter, it's the post-war generation, they were very politically engaged. They raised their children with a lot of human worldviews, sent them out in the world believing in a world without borders.