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.

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

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

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.

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.

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!"

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.