The smaller and younger kids are, the more patient you have to be. But if they're gifted, then it's a wonderful present that you're given by having a child like that in your film... more so than in the case of actors because, for example, if you ask them to play a lion, they don't then play a lion, they actually are a lion. So, a gifted child is something very special. On the other hand, if a child has no gifts in that way it's absolutely hopeless and there's nothing you can do!

When making a film, I'm never concerned about whether the theme is new or whether it's been done before in cinema or not. I'm led to make films if there's a theme that interests me or I experience something in my own life that confronts me with something that I want to deal with.

As a European filmmaker, you can not make a genre film seriously. You can only make a parody.

Because I'm the author of my screenplays I know what I'm looking for. It's true that I can be stubborn in demanding that I get what I want, but it's also a question of working with patience and love.

I'm not someone who enjoys long talks, long rehearsals. I'm very technical: I tell my actors, you come in, you sit down, you pick up a coffee, you look here, you say the line. We try it with the cameras rolling, and if it doesn't work, we adjust it until it does. It's very simple.

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.

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.