I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

My work is about life as you and I experience it. You're either lucky or you're not lucky; either your relationship works or it doesn't.

I can't really see how anybody could be particularly optimistic about the future in general because we are destroying the planet.

For me the journey of making a film is a journey of discovery as to what that film is. I mean what I do is what other artists do, painters, novelists, people that make music, poets, sculptors, you name it. It's about starting out and working with the material and discovering through making, working with the material the artifact.

I wonder if I would have been capable of producing anything if I worked in a more conventional way with a prewritten script, because I'm of the procrastinator class.

Independent filmmaking has always been there and it's not to be forgotten.

You will find hardly any improvising on camera anywhere in my films. It's very structured, but it's all worked out from elaborate improvisations over a long period, as you know.