- John & Jane (2005) was technically a "documentary" because the characters in the film and their spaces were all real. And yet it feels like science fiction. Those are real call centre employees but they are kind of performing themselves. This hybrid mix of documentary and science fiction comes from certain formal choices, like shooting on 35mm rather than video, or having every shot be static and highly composed. That immediately breaks the feeling that it's a "documentary" and evokes an uncanny sensation; it makes you question what you're watching. Is this real? Is this all made up?
- [on Daddy (2017)] Most [biopics] tend to be propaganda. You can never really know somebody, even somebody close to you. It's just one version, but it's always presented as 'the only authentic version'. In Daddy, [Arun] Gawli's life is depicted through characters that knew him. Depending on who's telling the story, he's a hero, a violent gangster; sometimes frightening, sometimes frightened.
- [on Miss Lovely (2012)] We restored all the old films that we used in Miss Lovely (2012). The negatives were badly damaged - many were dug out of basements or back rooms. It became like an archaeology project, digging up an ancient civilization of sleaze.
- [on Miss Lovely (2012)] I think all the women in Miss Lovely (2012) - even though it is from the exploiter's point of view, the female characters are way beyond what the men are doing because they have a much more complex way of navigating the space, and they are navigating in a way that is far more sophisticated than these guys because they have to. The men are blundering and not very evolved, literally killing each other in the process...
- [(On Events in a Cloud Chamber (2016)] I've always liked the weirdness of ghost stories -haunted houses, sunken cities...things like that. So, yeah, on the one hand, we tried to remake this phantom of a film - Events in a Cloud Chamber (2016)) - and on another, my film became a way for me to understand what it means to be an artist as you age and near the end.
- [on Daddy (2017)] "I don't like films that define people as Heroes and Villains."
- [on Events in a Cloud Chamber (2016)] "I find this stuff more inspiring, more future-looking than anything going on today in the art or film world. It's like ghost stories - so many missing links, mysterious artworks, lost films. But I'm not trying to be nostalgic, just trying to look to the past to find inspiration, because there were so many directions started and never finished."
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