I never use soundtrack; it is always part of the story.

Mainstream cinema raises questions only to immediately provide an answer to them, so they can send the spectator home reassured. If we actually had those answers, then society would appear very different from what it is.

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

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.

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.

As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

My mother as a young girl went out with a young SS officer and she didn't really know what was going on - she just liked the uniform. When he told her about the things that he did, she was disgusted and broke up with him.