You tend to be more attentive when you shoot on film because, you know, it costs more, and everybody needs to be focused when you're filming something. Everybody considers it something valuable and precious, so everybody's focused.
As an audience member myself, I love to be in a position where I'm trying to figure out what I am supposed to feel or if what I'm feeling is appropriate or not.
We were fortunate enough to shoot 'Alps' - write the script and shoot it - right after 'Dogtooth' premiered in Cannes. So we didn't just sit around and wait to figure out what to do because 'Dogtooth' was successful. We just wanted to make another film fast, so we just went ahead and did it.
I just do things that I'm interested in making and work with the people I'm interested in working with, and it's very important for me to maintain the creative control because, otherwise, I just don't want to do it.
By employing a certain sense of humor, you essentially get more serious about things and show conflict more effectively than if you were overly dramatic or only violent because that's a one-way approach that just forces audiences to watch something appalling.
I always loved films, and when I decided to go to film school, it was with the excuse that I would go into making commercials, because that would be a proper profession, and people wouldn't think I was crazy.
It's hard for me to find a script that's perfectly suited to me, so even if it's a good script, I'll still have to work on it with someone and shape it, making it the film that I want to make. So in that respect, I prefer to do the stuff that I've generated anyway.
Even today, I'm not sure why I make films or what makes me want films. I think it's other people's films. Whenever I see a really great film, I think, 'I want to make a film like that.' And then I never do.
Yeah, it shouldn't be an issue. Stories about women, about men, about homosexuals, about heterosexuals. We shouldn't point at what it is.
I think human relationships - the whole thing is cruel. It's very difficult.
'The Lobster' is very particular, and we did need to create a very specific world with specific rules so the whole premise would work.
'The Lobster,' at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer,' which turned out to be not as accessible as 'The Lobster.' It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.
The first time I was paid was with 'The Lobster,' because with the Greek films, we just had to pay ourselves - work for free while making commercials in order to survive.
I am not interested in representing reality. Actually, I am interested in representing reality, but that doesn't mean a naturalistic approach, which I think is kind of impossible.
The most important thing is to allow gaps and openings for people to make up their own minds - I don't want my film to be pretending to have one important truth to tell anyone.
Personal relationships, mood, chance, or anything like that can actually affect people's decisions, and when they're in a position of power, their capriciousness can affect the fate of a nation.
People influence each other, so one screening will be filled with laughs while another is dead silent.
I think you can be much truer to real emotions and reality by creating something that on the surface seems artificial but, by then putting everything together in the end, is much more impactful than trying to use realism in every individual element of the film.
In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it's my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and absurdity of things that we consider normal.
