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.
I had a lot of respect for Jeremy Renner as an actor before I worked with him, because I was very impressed with what he did in 'The Hurt Locker.'
'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.
I'm very sensitive about the fact that there's not a lot of good work for women in cinema that also deals with strong characters. But 'strong character' doesn't mean 'masculine character' - but something that finds the strength in femininity and the beauty in femininity. And something that says you can find femininity in men in some way.
Each movie I make has its own heroes, and the two heroes for me in 'Arrival' are Amy Adams and Joe Walker, the editor. We worked very, very hard, and it was, by far, the longest editing process.
The truth is, I'm someone coming from a spoiled society - the worst thing we deal with in Canada is winter.
If you don't deal with your shadows, you are condemned to repeat the same mistake over and over, as a human being or as a society.
'Arrival' talks very little about language and how to precisely dissect a foreign language. It's more a film on intuition and communication by intuition, the language of intuition.
Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not; that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema.
A longstanding dream of mine is to adapt 'Dune,' but it's a long process to get the rights, and I don't think I will succeed.
Very early on, I was writing stories, and I was amazed at Spielberg's movies when I was young. Coming from the countryside, I was so impressed with the way he was able to tell stories and the way he was able to deal with le merveilleux - the wonders. Very quickly, he became for me a massive hero, and he introduced me to the world of a director.
I was saying to myself that I would love to try it once, just one time, to know what it's like to make a movie in Hollywood. I was so curious because most of my favorite directors were there. There's a history; there's a way of working.
I'm among the hardcore fans of 'Blade Runner.' 'Blade Runner' is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's a movie that is linked with my love and passion for cinema.
As a director, you're a bit of a dictator. But I feel that you're a better director if you're open to other people's ideas. It means that it's tougher: you have to be in a choosing process; you have to put the ego aside. As long as everybody's aiming in the same direction... I'm open to my main partners in the film crew.
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.
Sometimes you have compulsions that you can't control coming from the subconscious... they are the dictator inside ourselves.
When I work in English, I'd say I don't see a big difference in my rapport with my team or the actors. When I work in English or French, the music of the language is different, but beyond that music, in the depths, it's the same.
I'm someone who thinks that the world would be a better place if there was a big middle class. I mean, middle class is peace. In a perfect world, everybody would have enough to eat and we'd be living in security. It's obvious. I'm very happy to pay my taxes and all that. I would say I'm more of a Social Democrat.