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I don't know any form of art or entertainment that can affect people the way movies can. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they can change your world. They can change your views.

My films don't have instant impact because they're dense with ideas that people have not thought about. It takes a while for the American public to wrap its head around some of the things I'm saying.

When I went to university, I finally got exposed to European films, and they had a strong impact on me. I felt those films had a lot of things to say that weren't getting expressed in the films I was used to seeing.

It's always more interesting to make a movie about what is relevant in your society. What's the political global backdrop? What are our threats? What are we vulnerable to? Because that's what an audience vibes on - that is what people are interested in, universally.

There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don't think are good for movies. They're trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.

I don't like doing movies that are meaningless or unrealistic. I like things with a lot of reality to them. I'm a pretty serious kind of person myself. Things affect me.

Whether you think a film will affect society or it's plain entertainment, it's all excellent, it's all noble.

I focus on the elements of a movie that are meant to invisibly affect me as a viewer. The edges. As an author, I'm aware of how the subconscious things can pluck at a reader's emotions, and I love it when filmmakers do the same.

If my film does not do well, it really hurts me. But by God's grace, even if some of my films may not have done well, people have still liked my work in it.

One can never anticipate how audiences will respond. One of the lessons that I've learned over the years is to that no matter what my feeling or opinion might be about a given film, once you give it to the audience, they own it.