It happens sometimes that the material itself carries things you have not fully planned. The footage has its own right, its own life, its own vibrancy and energy in it.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.

I'm one of the few reading and thinking people who loves Las Vegas for the vulgarity and omnipresence of the dream. The collective dream. There's something enormous about it. Let me say one thing: Las Vegas and cinema have similar roots. The country fair. The magician at the country fair. The vulgarity of the country fair.

North Korea is not an exception. Even there, where you think it would be completely sober, they have the myth of their revolution being connected to the volcano.

I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.

I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.