We made a film about the need for silence and withdrawal... and here we are at the epicentre of noise and excitement. Life is full of surprises.

When I watch my early documentaries, they're very eclectic. They don't follow any particular [pattern]. I would have gotten thrown out of film school because I didn't. I was just putting them together somehow as the spirit moved me, following my nose, thinking I was brilliant.

I have this theory that if you do a film, those who have not fallen asleep or left the cinema, they will live with the film much longer, and it will really enter their imagination and the subconscious much more profoundly.

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

For me, each film, each script is like a little journey in itself, and I'm reinventing the wheel. It's like how do I make this film. That's part of the pleasure and that's why I'm not a normal professional director.

I never made films like kind of career moves, like making this film in order to make that film in order to end up in Hollywood.