Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

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

When you look at my film you see footage that is unbelievably awesome and beautiful and dangerous looking. It's something that is very, very cinematic.

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes. I can edit almost as fast as I'm thinking, editing with celluloid means always searching for this little reel of film, and number it, and scribble on it with some sort of pens, and gluing it together, and working on a flatbed. It's much, much slower.

Netflix knew I was going to North Korea and Ethiopia and Iceland. They saw the film and liked it and that was that.