War scenes are less difficult than love scenes.

When Picasso painted in Paris, was he a Spanish or a French painter? It does not matter, he was Picasso, whatever the influences surrounding him. He simply chose Paris because it was the ideal place...

There is a broad cultural current that conveys the idea that a film is like a football team, it represents a nation, it is illustrated literature, filmed radio. These are outdated concepts, totally out of...

Today’s cinema is a global art form, it is impossible to make movies for a market the size of France, representing no more than 4% of the world’s total.

My way of remaining French was the financing scheme I used for Quest for Fire, with Fox funds, since it started as a 100% American production. The film was not in French and yet was...

The art of motion pictures is pictorial and language comes a distant second.

British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained.

When you create a movie, you create something in your image.

I think it is a mistake to identify a movie according to its language, as if movies were literature.

America is the only country capable of producing national movies: its culture has become a global culture.

The financing of my films has always been international.

I make movies just as painters paint: I work where I can.

The French have got to understand that a film is so expensive that it can no longer afford to be regional or even national in scope.

If you make a movie about Elizabeth I, how much of the dialogue is her real words? Audiences know when they go see a movie that it is fiction.

When a French book becomes an international hit it is because of the author and not because of the language. The same goes for movies.

The world distribution of French movies is a laughing matter. That is a fact.

When Americans shoot movies they aim at the entire planet. When the French make movies, they aim at Paris.

To do the writing, I have to have time to do research.

I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn’t take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans.