Quotes

(About Select Hotel): This film is what Brecht called 'a tragedy of the little people'. Pierre is like the line between the audience, the people paying to see the film, and the characters like Nathalie and Tof, who are human beings beyond being social stereotypes. Pierre recognises his own darkness in these two characters and in this he understands that things are not black and white, they're between the two. And when one recognises this, one can start to live with others - which is what Pierre does.

I never said to myself that I was going to do as Renoir did. But I discovered that Renoir never had a single hero, he had a group of characters that try to live together and my films have all been the same. They're about groups in which the so-called principal character becomes secondary in relation to a situation. If one looks at ultra-commercial American films, perhaps it'd be better to call them 'products' - they work from the presupposition of a person in danger who arrives at overcoming these dangers. For me, life isn't like that. It's together that one improves things, not alone. What one sees in these 'products' is that there's no other solution but to kill, crush and eliminate others so that the individual can triumph. That, for me, is philosophically impossible.

I found myself more or less on the streets at 16. I went from the middle class straight to the margins after a car accident tore my family apart.

I come from the absolute margins.