I didn't want to do casting in a way that you find yourself in a situation where there's this perfect girl for a part and you just can't cast her because the family says no.

Of course, when you work with actors and when you work on a script everything that you know about the human experience can't possibly go in.

It wouldn't have existed without France, and it's a French initiative. As a filmmaker, I owe everything to France - I got accepted at a French film school that takes six directors a year. Once you're in, you make films under the eye of people in the industry. You grow up in front of their eyes.

When you make a film, you come to say something.

Making a film transforms your relationship to the world. And there's some sort of natural authority that builds up along the way.

The foreign-language Oscar is something that doesn't go to the producer or the director it goes to the country.

If you are not a New Yorker, when you arrive there for the first time you have the impression you grew up there because you've seen it in so many films. It's been filmed from every single angle and by so many different filmmakers that you know the streets, the sidewalks, the architecture, the cabs, the temper of the people.

With a screenwriter and with the actors there is always an environment of trust. You can say anything, all your secrets, and you know that it won't get out of that room.