Europeans used to be proud to be the advanced form of democracy. Now they're definitely a little bit ashamed because we are seeing that finally, the bond that we had, it was money.
I would not like to have a homogeneous type of film. I wanted to go to many different kinds of ways of making cinema and telling stories and watching the country.
I don't believe that people are robots. I think you should try to get personal, try to put yourself in the film in a deep way, and try to give that to the viewer, even if some of them will not connect with that kind of universe and surreality.
I think that I prefer to shoot characters even if they are not good people. I don't think that cinema is a place where you can do sentences like in a court.
My job is just to make the films and then I don't have any strategy.
In general I'm more attached to a cinema that tries not to replicate the real world and life.
I have the opportunity to make my films and I think that's a luxury. I don't have any problems by filming things that can have a connection with left-wing policy, even if we have a right-wing government. There are some countries which cannot say the same, so I'm lucky.
It's true that mostly in the last years, from the moment when Portugal was subjected to this policy of austerity, imposed by Europe, that I think many Portuguese became a little bit more left-leaning, and so did I too, I could not not care about the situation. I had to deal with it in some way.
I would not describe myself as a left-wing filmmaker. I don't think this is the first thing that would pop into my mind when talking about my work.
You know, some people say that Cannes is the worst place in the world to see cinema. It's a paradox. They have the new films , lots of interesting films premiering there for the first time. At the same time it's such a mess and a confusion. You have to run from one screening to another.
They say films they are made by computers. There are computer programs to see statistically what people are more interested in, and they practice computer combinations in these things to try to have more viewers.
I think that there's a very lucid side in cinema: entering a theater and seeing the film.
