If anything, I see myself as a witness. I'd also be pleased, if you'd call me an interpreter. I try to hear and see the message of a place and pass it on, into that other language, the universal one of images.

Filmmakers tell actors to adjust their body language, and the famous presence of the actor is his or her body language. That is what makes them special and a movie star. An actor's capital is his body.

The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed.

If you travel a lot, if you like roaming about in order to lose yourself, you can end up in the strangest places. I think it must be a kind of built-in radar, which often takes me to places that are either peculiarly quiet or peculiar in a quiet sort of way.

Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.

For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.