I'm far more relaxed with German. I'm a control freak. I like to know exactly who's saying and doing what.

You'll see more violence in any television crime series than you will in my films Art is there to have a stimulating effect, if it earns its name. You have to be honest, that's the only thing.

A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation.

It became a gamble to myself whether I was able to do the exact same film ["Funny Games"]under very different circumstances.

In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Because in the feudal system of that period at least 80% of people lived in villages, so it's very simple to get a cross-section of society in a single village. You get the microcosm of the social macrocosm.