I like to get something that is impossible to verbally order. Sometimes it's something the person is not even conscious of, and it's something you could never ask of them specifically. It's just there.

Every documentary is subjective. It's a total lie to say there are objective documentaries.

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.

In all my documentaries I did all the camera work, but in fiction I didn't want to do it myself. I think the machinery is so heavy and demanding that you would leave the actors alone for a long time.

There is one thing where people are always right. It is when they are describing what they have been feeling when watching your film. You cannot say: No, you did not feel like that!

I went to film school when I was 17, and of course when you are very young you think that there is nothing else in the world except film. At some point I started getting hungry to see something else. For five years I didn't make any films, I was traveling around the world, writing for newspapers, working in theater, working in opera, I thought I would never return to film.

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