When I used to write novels, I always wrote for one person, for this person who thought and felt the same way as I do. It almost felt like I was writ… - Lee Chang-dong

To be honest, it’s very difficult to explain what stories I see fit to become a film or not. I have several people I regularly work with — producers, actors, crew members — and it’s always very difficult to explain why this story can or can’t be a film. It often puts me in trouble, as well. I can find it hard to explain myself. Whether the story is fun or moving or might receive good reviews is honestly not that important to me. It’s a very intuitive feeling that I have — mainly about whether the story is worth reaching out to the audience to communicate with them at this point in time. Is the story worth the effort of bringing it to the audience? It’s sort of a very sensitive and intuitive decision-making process that happens within me.

Literature is different from cinema in that, when I’m writing it, I’m thinking of one reader who will go through a range of emotions with me, whereas with film I’m addressing a larger audience. For me, writing fiction is like writing love letters.

To me it seems that films these days are becoming more and more simple, and the audience seems to desire simpler stories. Of course, films sort of shape the desires and the demands the audience makes, so I kind of wanted to go against this trend and see if a film can sort of throw endless questions at the audience. Endless questions about a larger mysterious world.