Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

On the set I make jokes I can't get too involved, or it turns into sentimental soup. I try to keep it light.

It's much harder to write a script that involves two people in a single location than 20 people in 30 different locations.

To me, it's far more efficient to mobilize the imagination. It's far more efficient to hear a creaking step, for example, than to see the face of a monster, which usually looks ridiculous, and where you know that the blood is ketchup.

The film [the white Ribbon] does try to use German Fascism as an example, but not specifically Fascism... the results of German Fascism. It shows how people are prepared or indoctrinated for an ideology... people who are already in a state of repression who have been humiliated by society and who clasp at a straw that's offered to them. And how that's then developed into a form of indoctrination.

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.