If you do an original film and you want to cut a scene out you do it. But when you do a shot by shot remake you don't have that option and every scene has to work again.

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

For me, it's always difficult when a historical film claims to depict or represent a reality that none of us can know, that is always different. It's always the case. We never know what happened then. So my approach with the narrator is to question that, to leave that open, to underline the fact that this is uncertain.

Like every filmmaker, I make my films to reach the widest audience possible.

Every form of anti-Semitism, every form of xenophobia plays on the fear of the unknown, and unfortunately there are all too many politicians who know how to manipulate that. The dumber people are, the more they feel the need for a broad set of shoulders they can lay their head against.

If you go with the principle, you should go with the principle. If I really saw the subject very differently than ten years ago, I would have done a different movie.

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.