In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal. Also, in Quebec, we have this added issue that we want people to speak French, because French is always on the verge of disappearing to some extent. I work, play and do everything in French.

There is some humor in Monsieur Lazhar and in all my other films, but this one I'll try to make a real comedy from start to finish. It's called Prescott Etc. because the name of the constituency is so long that everybody in the constituency just says Prescott Etc. I don't know if that's what it will be. It's a working title.

I didn't want the film to be didactic, and this is tough because if you look at the list of issues, you have immigration, the education system, you have the grieving, you have suicide. I think what saved me were two things. I tried to do everything with some level of restraint and let the spectator make up his own mind.

In Canada, we have so much land, so much space, and so few people.

Any place where you have to deal with many social actors like a school - you have the parents, the Ministry of Education, the school board, and the teachers - you need all kinds of sets and rules. You're trying to foresee anything that can happen and everything becomes really rigid. They don't want to talk about death because they don't want to overwhelm the children, but that has already happened, so you're not going to overwhelm them more.

The teacher will never be a parent. The parents are the parents. But they have to engage in some sort of active education beyond just teaching mathematics and French and English because the kids spend more time there than they do with their parents at that age. We have to accept that other adults will be part of our children's education and they will have bad teachers. That's going to happen.

I feel relief about the Oscars. You know, you're not in this business for prizes but, okay, I missed one.