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

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.

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.

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.

I had the feeling I had to stay focused on what's lying under. A big part of the story in Toni Erdmann happens on the sub-level. On the surface, a lot of scenes, it's banal. If the actor starts thinking, "Oh, I'm in a genre, I'm doing a comedy, I'm doing funny things," then you lose.

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

I always do casting for every role, even if it's just one sentence. I like to work with theater actors because they're used to a process. I think filmmaking sometimes can become so stiff. Sometimes I have the feeling that people come together praying in the morning that, "Let's just shoot something, no matter what! Let's just finish this day, no matter what we will tape!"