Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable.

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.

The difficulty, then, is 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.

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.

It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.

I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug.

If a director says he doesn't care how many people see his films at all, I simply don't believe him. Otherwise why would he bother to make the film? The only explanation would be that it would be an act of masturbation. I think that every creator is looking for a receptor. He's looking for an audience. There are two parts of the equation: a creator and, necessarily, the receiver of the work. It's the same thing for a painter who wants his paintings to be seen.