Michel Hazanavicius

In France, it's really different the way you live. It's a non-religious country. The public space is not religious; religion is a private thing.

This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story.

When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural.

Sometimes when an actor says something almost perfect, but you know you have to edit it, if you tell them to change something immediately, it will come out great.

The silent movie is an emotional cinema: it's sensory; the fact that you don't go through a text brings you back to a basic way of telling a story predicated on the feelings you have created.

Even if I make fun of him, I try to portray him as a human being. Sometimes because he's the great Jean-Luc Godard, we see him as a concept.

There's always been a struggle with filmmakers between art and industry, and you have to find a balance.

I think we are at the very beginning of high changes, not only in terms of digital film, but in the way the movies will be screened, whether they'll be screened on phones, on computers - on everything.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

To work with kids is difficult. To work with non-actors is difficult.