At 13 I was someone that didn't have a personality yet. It's a fascinating period in a human life. It's so exciting because you are in between childhood and adulthood.

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.

We exaggerate the difference between documentary and fiction. I think that on some level a fiction film is also a documentary on the actors. You can't wash away your life's history, which is written on your face, unless you get a facelift.

I don't think the concept of "directing actors" exists in the sense that if you get what you order from an actor you'll always get bad acting. Every actor is scared just like a regular person.

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.

When I make a documentary I shoot very little but I hang around with my camera for a long time. I look at the people for a long time through the loop and then when I see something interested then I shoot. I think that I have become very sensitive to these things.

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.