If we are right, you grew up in hippie community outside Paris and felt lost and lonely. Does this experience somehow mirrors in your film, where you sometimes don´t know what you have come up with?

When I was 13 I changed my name, don´t know why, but I somehow wanted to have different identity. Then I discovered new world, world of film and there I found myself. It helped me to discover the world, since I felt bit different, bit misfit. In the darkness of the cinema I felt very happy and what I have seen on screen was much bigger than I. I started to make films at very early age and I was still discovering cinematography.

Was it difficult for you during first film to hide the lack of experience and still be in command of the crew? Was filming never ending process of trial and errors since you weren´t sure how it all works and where does it end?

During my first short movie I hold a camera in my hands for the first time. I must admit, that since that time up until now I still have the same feelings that production of film is a bluff, for I want money from producers telling them I know what I am doing but in fact I have no idea. When I make as few films as I make, it can happen that I don´t hold camera for 10 years. I think making film is never ending process of discovering something new because with new technology people get used to things very quickly and cinematographer has to find something new. When Lumiére Bros showed their first film about train entering the station, people in first rows were hiding under the seats. When it was showed for second time, they already knew what to expect so filmmaker had to come up with something new. Today I see it the same way and feel it the same way as I did when I watched sci-fi films at the age of 18.It gives me strength.

There are big, long gaps between your films. What do you do in those gaps, write scripts, try to find producers or forget about film and live ordinary life?

I would say, live ordinary life. I enjoy travelling, have a daughter and am sometimes sick. I love reading a lot, mainly French and Russian authors. Sometimes I feel the book was written for me. I don´t know why, but in last couple of years I can´t read books in French. After each film comes disappointment and exhaustion, usually if people refuse my films. It takes years before I find energy to make another film. I have problems to find producers and actors and it takes long time before the jigsaw is completed.

It is said that director is as good as his last movie. Your film Les Amants du Pont Neuf, took three years to make and it was a flop, then you waited 8 years, filmed Pola X, which was another flop. Didn´t you think that you do something wrong and would need a re-think otherwise no one would give you money next time?

It´s hard, when you try to create something. Maybe you are right, I don´t know. Les Amants du Pont Nef cost me lots of money, I went over the budget and it was a flop so I was lonely and exhausted. For some period no producer would touch my films. When I shook it off I went to America to try and find money but failed and it took me years before I got myself together and made Pola X. It was loosely interpreted novel by Herman Melville. But it flopped again and I was in pieces. It´s like vicious circle, since when I try to make film and end up badly, I am desperate but I would have been even more desperate if I just sat and did nothing. So where is the solution? To make a film you need people, maybe not so the money but people, who know where and how to find money. When I started, my producers were gangsters, mafia guys, but they liked film. These days, producers are gangsters also but they are gangsters who only want money, don´t care about film. And I don´t think that film should be purely connected with money. It´s experiment and risk and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn´t. I can´t make film which someone made before me. For me making film is a process of discovery. I always thought that film is important media, but I don´t think that is a case anymore.

If somebody didn´t know you and your work, which film would you recommend him to watch first?

No, idea, it depends on personality, type of a person, age and sex and what relationship I have towards that person. I never watch my films after I finish them although I remember what they are about. When I was young I was ashamed of my films, but not anymore.

It is said you don´t talk to your actors which must be pretty difficult for creative job. How does it work between you, then?

I know Denis Lavan, my main actor, for 30 years, but we don´t meet in normal, life, don´t go for lunch and we are not friends. To be honest with you, I don´t care about life of actors. I rehearse with them very seldom. I try to create some kind of tunnel which will suck us into the story of the film. If the scene is not as strong as I hoped for, I make another take. Never improvise. In the past, it was interesting to shoot something and don´t see actors till next day. Today, film is very expensive to make so I have to film quickly and cheaply. I enjoy the most working in editing room, I feel like composer with orchestra, one big symphony. When I started, I was in editing room two weeks after starting the film and never looked at dailies, so what I filmed I saw firstly in the editing room. Since my second film, I cooperate with editor named Nelly Quettier, who is really great.

How did you discover Denis Lavant?

I was preparing film When boy meets girl, I had a girl but didn´t have a boy. I walked on the streets, looked for in music clubs or among artists but couldn´t find the right one. So I postponed the film for a year. Then I got a list of unemployed actors and he looked differently so I approached him, we met and I told him I will take him. At that time I still wasn´t sure he is the right one, but he was willing to repeat takes and after all those years I think he is capable of playing anything.

We read that you said you don´t like working with people who ask you questions. Isn´t it difficult for others to find out what you want when you yourself don´t know it?

I don´t think so. I try to find something and if it was pre-set, what would be the point of doing so? In the air there is that question mark and we are the dot under it and try to ask questions in the film, show the worries, question things. If you didn´t do it, what sense would be your work? That film is interesting for me. There are films who tell you this is this and that is that. What´s interesting on it ?

Are you interested in view of your audience, do you talk to them?

It depends, if it´s far from France like in India or China, yes, I am. I don´t like when people have the same opinion which is mostly the case. Sometimes I talk to one person, face to face, sometimes it´s great to have big audience and hear different ideas. But you can´t tell that beforehand since you don´t know that.

What do you say about your movie Holy Motors, which was screened in Prague?

I thought I am a blind person going through the tunnel not seeing the light at the end of it. I am not sure what I really created. We were shooting very fast and it is a parabola between human friendship and world of internet. I tried to show the experience when one person is alone in the world of internet, I wanted to show the difference between our real life and life we would love to have. Very often we are tired with our life and we want to be somebody else. So these white limos are hired for hour or two and inside them we become somebody else, as when we sit behind internet.

Where do you take the inspiration for your films?

When I was filming my first movie, I saw tons of various films from silent era, French new wave and Russian films. After my second film I didn´t watch that many and now I hardly watch any. That inspiration can be anything, experience from travelling, expression of the face, good book, anything really. I would say that inspiration is limitless. Now I want to make a musical since my life-long ambition was to be a musician, so now I will try to fulfill my ambition.

At the festival in Cannes you said you don´t care about the audience cos they will die anyway. But films are made for audience, otherwise you could watch your film alone at home. So who do you care for?

I am interested in people and films. Audience means sold tickets but when I make films I don´t think and care about people who will come and buy the tickets, you know box office mass, I do care about people as human beings whom I want to tell my story. Alfred Hitchcock was gifted man who had gift and memory which he connected together as narrator and poet but I am neither. He managed to remember his audience and say “this would be interesting for them” and tell it the way to slot it into film nicely. So people came to see films which he made the way he wanted and box office keeper was happy, too.

Do you have directors who impressed you and they are your idols?

Hundreds of them, most of them are dead. Without them I would not be anything. I was learning from their films when I was young and for me the man behind camera was a small God since he created something extraordinary. So be it Griffiths or Hitchcock, I am indebted to all of them for inspiration.