I have a huge relationship with Brazil; it's almost a love affair, I would say. And to me, to introduce that specific martial art like capoeira in Hollywood movies was something important to me.

I liked the idea of working with Jean Reno and Mathieu Kassovitz; there was something logical for me. I thought it was a good thing to do. Actually, The Crimson Rivers movie was a big success, and it was one of the biggest successes I ever had in France.

The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That's one of the points of art - to challenge your preconceptions.

I have a tendency to think that that stereotype of American movies and Hollywood movies doesn't exist. Of course you have the studios that have a very hard policy upon their artists, but then I haven't really been doing any real Hollywood movie yet.

I grew up watching 'Raging Bull.

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

If kids really made all the parents better, there wouldn't be crazy kids in the world.