I want to challenge my cinematography and my editing.
All our forms are unique - movies, music and literature - and you have to leave the person who is doing it to do their best.
Almost always, when we have fights in movies, they're done in these strange rooms where nothing gets broken. It's almost like they're in padded cells.
I grew up in different parts of Africa. I grew up in Mozambique and places like that. I've been in South Africa many times.
I think it's always interesting to make sensational stories where, if these people don't make the right choice, it actually puts marks not just on their souls but also their bodies. That means that you can visualize existential questions.
I come from the working-class area of Stockholm, and I grew up with Serbian and Chilean people.
If you create a movie that is only character driven, with a weak plot, then you - as a director, you have to make sure you keep pushing the tempo.
Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.
I did two movies that were arthouse movies; they were critically successful but made no money at all... but after making those movies, I thought, 'I wouldn't watch my own movies when I was 16, and my buddies where I came from wouldn't watch my movies, because they were boring.'
When you're 16, the top of the world is directing a gangster movie.
It's really hard to get a coffee with someone. I have to call my agent, my agent calls their agent, their agent calls their manager, the manager calls back, the actor sends someone to the manager... then you get, 'Yeah, yeah, I'd love to have dinner at six,' and all I wanted was coffee! It can take, like, six days to get coffee.
For me, it's important that the script is good. Then a good director will want to make it.
I looked at early movies with Robert Redford, and I like how Robert, even though he had that automatic charisma and was a very verbal person, he always played those more silent characters and played within the scene and never overacted.
I made this Swedish movie called 'Snabba Cash,' or 'Easy Money,' and it was shown at the Berlin Film Festival. A lot of American studios, agents, and people like that saw it there and liked it.
I always loved when James Stewart did roles that were not so dialogue-based, like 'Vertigo.'
I have severe claustrophobia, and I panic if I'm more than six feet above ground.
Creating stuff is hard. But, if that terrifies you, you will just be numb, and you better just stay at home and watch TV and do something else. Move into the woods and live with the trees.
I run a fast pace on my sets, man. I like the energy of the scene to be the energy on the set. I think it affects the actors, and I think it affects the crew. There's that sensation like you're really shooting it for real, like in a documentary.
When I was asked to come over to the States, I thought to myself, 'What the Americans are very good at doing is creating stories with strong movement and plots that carry the movie as it goes along.'
Do we have the right to understand the world we live in? The right to all the information regarding why our governments are making the decisions that they are?
