I try to watch a movie a day, if not more, and through movies, I learned about so many different political themes I hadn't been interested in and cultural things I hadn't been aware of and economic factors I hadn't thought about.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In my late 20s, I realized that I had a very clear social conscience and strong opinions about things like diversity, equality, and education, and while I tried to become more politically literate, I just couldn't catch on. It felt like I had walked into a movie that had already started, and no one would explain what had happened.
I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn't know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.
When I do a political movie, I do a political movie.
I like making films about different cultures. I'm interested in things that I've never encountered before. I try to put myself in the audience's position.
For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.
As I became very defined in my personal politics, I turned down some films that I slightly regret now; I'm not going to say what they were.
I just love movies, so suddenly, you're political about movies, and that's dark. It's just not fun when something you love becomes calculated.
The privilege I've had over 15 movies over a very long time has been to make movies that were ambitious or grown-up, complex, that had themes in them that were sometimes political, sometimes challenging, to make these movies on a scale.
Knowledge about the economy, ideas about capitalism and government, the future of the world and geopolitics were things I was never really interested in.
I think of my films as not necessarily political but more moral. Between my father, my stepfather, and my mother - they all felt pretty passionately about the importance of standing up and doing the right thing, and none of them were suck-ups. What motivates me is usually abuse of power.