When I auditioned actors I never make them act. I choose a long symphony, then I tell them to sit down and I play the symphony for them. Then I sit and I look at them. I always pick a piece of music that has up and downs, very dramatic parts, very quiet parts and really sensitive parts so that it can produce different emotions.

I had worked in fiction a lot before I started making documentaries, but when I was around 32 or 33-years-old I suddenly got so fed up with the world of fiction, which is so money-centered.

The cinematography was of course incredibly important to me because I graduated as a cinematographer.

When I auditioned actors I never make them act. I choose a long symphony, then I tell them to sit down and I play the symphony for them. Then I sit and I look at them. I always pick a piece of music that has up and downs, very dramatic parts, very quiet parts and really sensitive parts so that it can produce different emotions.

If you take a big epic novel and you shoot it, when you get to the editing room you notice that it has 2 million climaxes, which fill the whole 90 or 100 minutes. Then you realize you can't cut them out because if somebody is dying and you cut that out it seems like they just disappear from the film.

You give your film away to the audience once it's done. I never look at my films after the premier. The film needs to start its own history.

Being a female director become as professional as your male colleagues and forget the whole question about being female. You are female anyway and it is going to work in your favor. The scope of female professional superiority can be understood by so few men that mostly they do not miss it.