The problem with shooting in Paris is, it's been shot to death. When you're in it, you already think you're in a movie, so how do you get away from that feeling, and give some frisson to the viewer?

In 2006, I started making a film called 'Restraint of Beasts.' While I was making it, I had a personal disaster. My wife fell ill, so we stopped shooting halfway through. And then sadly, my wife died.

I try to turn a place on film into a mental state. I always have three or four locations that I repeat and return to in a film, to make it more mythic. But my fiction films are relatively subjective stories, experienced though one character. And that always justifies a little stylisation in terms of landscape.

Pawel Pawlikowski Quotes