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Then if your movie clicks with real audiences, you'll be sucked into some sort of Hollywood orbit. It's a devil of a place where the only religion that really counts is box office.

All we try and do is make the best films we can. If you do that then hopefully the audiences will come, and they have. Everything else is gravy.

As much as we'd like to believe that our work is great and that we're infallible, we're not. Hollywood movies are made for the audience. These are not small European art films we're making.

We all do films believing in them completely, but sometimes, the audiences like what we like, and other times, they don't.

We make films that we ourselves would want to see and then hope that other people would want to see it. If you try to analyze audiences or think there's some sophisticated recipe for success, then I think you are doomed. You're making it too complicated.

I ultimately have faith though, that good films will find their audience.

The cinema has done more for my spiritual life than the church. My ideas of fame, success and beauty all originate from the big screen. Whereas Christian religion is retreating everywhere and losing more and more influence; film has filled the vacuum and supports us with myths and action-controlling images.

My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.

To me, film is a religion. I don't expect to get paid to make it, but I do expect total dedication.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.