I must say, I am a 10,000-times better director because I am in therapy. I'm serious. I can understand more the actors. I can manipulate them more easily.

I made 'Enemy' to prep myself for 'Prisoners.' I had the need to direct something smaller in English before going to Hollywood. That's the way I sold it to Warner because they asked me if I was berserk to make a movie right before.

The reception for 'Enemy?' I don't care. No matter what other people think, it was important for me. I will stand for that movie, even if I stand alone.

On a film crew, you can see very quickly that some people who are working with you are stronger than you. Then you have to have the humility to listen to them. And because very often they have better ideas than yours, it can be tough on the evil ego. But it makes a better film.

I was at the premiere of 'Prisoners,' and I heard two thousand people scream at the same time. I turned to my wife and said, 'I love cinema!' It's the sharing of emotions together, and it's collective. It's one of the last communions we have.

I'd love to be able to do a comedy like 'Dr. Strangelove.' I'm not a very serious person. Really, I'm very silly.

I'm learning more and more to share creativity with the crew and actors. A film crew is more powerful if you listen to them, but it does make my job more tough because I have to listen.

I must say, to my great surprise and pleasure, I deeply loved making movies in the United States because of all the opportunities it gave me to work with people that I admire as artists.

When there's no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start.

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' Big, big, big smash for me. My birth of the love of cinema was born with 'Close Encounters' and '2001.' Those sci-fi movies I saw when I was a little kid.

The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience.

I'm not someone that loves dialogue - I am someone that loves movement. Action, if it's well done, can be very poetic and meaningful.

I love, in movies, when you feel and you understand the past of the character without it being said or having a flashback or something that explains. I think, in 'Prisoners,' we need to understand that Loki's character's past was not first class. He was not the first in his class.

I never went to school for directing. I studied theater with a director. I followed plays to see how a director would talk to the actors. I tried to make my own school.

For me, masculinity is about control, and femininity is more of an embrace, the art of listening. It's very inspiring to explore the shadows of masculinity and femininity, and the tensions between both, and the place of women in the world right now.

In Canada, for boys, your identity is built on hockey. It's your social position; it's everything. And I was the worst hockey player of Canada.

Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not; that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema.

When I was a kid, I was always going to bed creating a story, and that was the birth of filmmaking for me. I would like going to the dream-state by telling the story to someone else in my mind. That was my imaginary friend; it was an imaginary audience listening to my story.

I've been dreaming to do sci-fi since I was 10 years old, and I said 'no' to a lot of sequels - I couldn't say 'no' to 'Blade Runner.'

The thing I realized about final cut is it's the power of the best cut. I didn't have final cut on 'Prisoners,' but what you saw is the best cut. 'Sicario' is a directors' cut. 'Arrival' is a directors' cut.

I was a sci-fi addict when I was a kid and a teenager. Novels, graphic novels, movies, it was my way to deal with reality.

The idea, as a director, is to be able to bring everybody on board and to inspire and give energy to everybody and to explain specific color, specific ambience. I need to be very precise, but I think I'm a better director when I'm more a channeler than a dictator.

When I use violence in a movie, it's just to express the power, the impact of it.

The beauty of Toronto is that it has not been shot a lot in movies, for itself at least. I mean, most of the time, Toronto is shot to portray something else.