When I was in my early 20s, I was quite into Japanese animation. It's like the same thing that I end up always saying which is, imagery based stuff is the thing that really gets me.

I think that 'Elysium' the movie is unrealistic, with the space station and everything. I think 'Elysium' the metaphor is completely realistic: it's exactly where we're going.

I don't want to make a film that offends people, but the whole world is so politically correct - I'm not going to not do something because it may be politically incorrect. At some point, the metaphors and allegories break down. They disappear, and you just have science fiction.

If you just compare South Africans to the rest of the world, I think that white South Africans, and especially English-speaking white South Africans, are exactly the same as Brits or Australians or New Zealanders or Canadians or Americans.

It's just my maybe naive, optimistic view that whatever knowledge we gain, and if it comes to pass that we can somehow understand what consciousness is, if we can somehow create that, it will ultimately be used for the good.

I love the idea of people being themselves in films.

In the realm of strong A.I. or in the realm of human consciousness, I think that it's been something that troubles humans or forces us to look at it over and over for millennia, or as long as we've really been conscious, because there is no answer. There is no explanation for us, even for a one percent grip to hold on to. So we just don't know why we're here, we don't know how consciousness is created.