If you do not understand how finances are functioning, you are in a very precarious situation, at least concerning long-term survival.

Otherwise [digital revolution] hasn't changed my way of filmmaking, I'm not nostalgic in postulating we should still make films on celluloid. I love celluloid but I don't need to continue on celluloid.

You have to be completely open to what people would tell you. You do not shape them; you do not force the materials into your ideas. You have to have all windows and doors open.

My non-fiction films are pretty much fiction, or at least close... It's all "movies" for me. I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can't get rid of them. I did not invite them.

Gaining trust is not difficult for me. I needed to gain the trust of the North Korean supervisors.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.

The power of a volcano when it erupts is so evident, so visible, so palpable.