All politicians have three ways of expressing themselves - the intimate dialogue that can often be violent and raw, then the dialogue in front of the camera and then big public speeches.

If some actors were more realistic and others bordering on caricature, that would have been imbalanced. It would be as if we saw an airplane in a 3 Musketeers movie.

I want viewers want to talk about The Conquest. I want the dialogue to start after the movie. The cinema is there to leave a trace. I hope my film leaves a trace and that it will open a door for French cinema and that tomorrow other directors will make political movies. The job of a filmmaker today is to talk about the world surrounding him and, through his movies, to both entertain and raise questions about modern society.

The film The Conquest will be seen on many different levels and the American point of view is always more technical. The French are less technical - it's 'I like it, or I don't like it.' I hope that this film can have a life in the U.S. - it's the grand country of cinema. I grew up with Hollywood movies, so for a French director to have a film distributed in the U.S. is a real opportunity.

All politicians have three ways of expressing themselves - the intimate dialogue that can often be violent and raw, then the dialogue in front of the camera and then big public speeches.

There are laws about personal protection so it's rare to see a politician criticized. Normally, according to the law, there's a judicial problem with calling people by their real names.

The Conquest is not a film about Nicolas Sarkozy - it's a film about political conquest. It's a Shakespearean expression, where we have all the elements of a drama, both political and personal at the same time. The decors and the costumes are all based on real photos - I wanted to be as close to reality as possible. Nicola Piovani's theatrical music gives a distance that's almost Chaplinesque, there's something quite funny. There's no imitation, no caricature, no parodie - it's realism with a distance where the dialogues are often quite funny.