A feature film is twenty-four lies per second.

Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms.

I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.

Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

I'm not really a happy person. It's a question of temperament. I have a tendency toward melancholy. You can feel quite happily melancholic.

An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears with my work. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and their neuroses in order to create something.

I try to get closer to reality, to get close to the contradictions. The cinema world can be a real world rather than a dream world.

Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.

Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

Use social media for good and lift others up, not tear them down. Stay on the high road. Keep your peace.

It's not the small of her back, her thighs, or her chest or eyes that matter most. It's the parts of her she's afraid to show that you should get to know.

If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will let you alone.

Lazy reviewers look up other people's reviews and they write the same thing, so you get people writing crap based on crap.

I have an accent, I'm limited, I have to play foreign parts - I would love to play American parts but I can't because I have an accent. You are more limited as a foreigner in every area.

You want to sound crazy, but you want to actually be right.

Russians aren't good at haggling, they aren't passionate about business. But they are outstanding fighters.

Every divorce is the result of selfishness on the part of one or both parties to a marriage contract.

Men have marble, women waxen, minds.

I can endure my own despair, but not another's hope.