It's difficult because you can't generalise about these things. But in essence, you deal with children as simply as you deal with actors - you have to show a certain sort of respect. You deal with them lovingly and protect them, but if you protect them enough then they're open to engage with what you want to do with them.

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.

I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television, I always did what I wanted to do, and if I couldn't, I didn't do it. It was a freedom that, these days, young directors starting out don't have.

As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

My films are intended as polemical statements against the American 'barrel down' cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.

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

I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.