Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

I think that religion is an integral part of human needs, but the question also is how you understand religion.

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.

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

When you create a church, an institution, and you create a dogma. When you create an ideology, that's the danger. Communism, too, is a beautiful idea, but millions of people died when communism became an ideology.

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.