History is not dead: it is only taking a nap. - Thodoros Angelopoulos

You cannot help but be influenced by a place and its culture when you grow up there, especially at a particular time, as I did, when the church was an important part of my cultural (not necessarily religious) life.

The world needs cinema now more than ever. It may be the last important form of resistance to the deteriorating world in which we live. In dealing with borders, boundaries, the mixing of languages and cultures today, I am trying to seek a new humanism, a new way.

I draw techniques from everything I've seen [...] I continue to love [...] very much the films of Murnau, Mizoguchi, Antonioni. More recently: Tarkovsky's Stalker, Godard's Every Man for Himself and of course Ordet. [...] But the only specific influences I acknowledge are Orson Welles, for his use of plan-sequence and deep focus, and Mizoguchi, for his use of time and off-camera space.