There are really two types of laughter on the part of the spectator. There is the laughter of recognition - which means seeing things you're familiar with and laughing at yourself. But there's also hysterical laughter - a way of dealing with the things we see that upset us.

In general, in all my films, I choose to create a certain mistrust, rather than claiming that what I'm showing onscreen is an accurate reproduction of reality. I want people to question what they are seeing onscreen. In the same way as I used the narrator, I also used black and white, because it creates a distance toward what's being seen. I see the film as an artifact rather than a reliable reconstruction of a reality that we cannot know.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

It's a disease of critics that once they've labeled someone, it's very hard to change their perspective. It's laziness.

It could be Fascist, religious or political - it's always the same model that operates in these circumstances, and it's that which is the actuality of this film. Therefore, it's not specifically an explanation of German Fascism because that would be an impossible thing to do in any case.

It’s harder to write a story with just two people in a room than with 50 characters.