That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.

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

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.

What I like are films that take me seriously, that don't treat me as more stupid than I am.

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.

In my film "Benny's Video," I depicted violence but I failed to say all that I had to say, so I wanted to continue the dialog and that's why I did "Funny Games." The irony is that after I shot "Funny Games," but it hadn't been released at all anywhere.

I want to make it clear: it's not that I hate mainstream cinema. It's perfectly fine. There are a lot of people who need to escape, because they are in very difficult situations, so they have the right to escape from the world. But this has nothing to do with an art form.