Logistically, technically, shooting at 48 frames per second, working in 3D – those were all huge challenges. The biggest lessons were more logistical – decision making on a day to day level. It was a very complex schedule, always shifting. So, those were huge challenges. Stamina-wise, there were many, many challenges.

This cockroach-like existence is cumulatively intolerable even though on any given night it is perfectly manageable. “Cockroach” is of course an allusion to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes up one morning to discover that he has been transformed into an insect. The point of the story is as much the responses and incomprehension of his family as it is the account of his own sensations, and it is hard to resist the thought that even the best-meaning and most generously thoughtful friend or relative cannot hope to understand the sense of isolation and imprisonment that this disease imposes upon its victims.

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine.

I tried to get funding to shoot this film and couldn’t—nobody wanted to touch it, you know?

I feel myself still like a student learning many things doing films.

That was the case for me when I made Angel, which was in English and was a big flop.

I just want to go on walking, you know? I like to continue my work of movies and just go on with the capacity and opportunity to do exactly what I want. To stay free.

I think they have no duty. But we do have the opportunity, not to change the world, but to make people think differently.

But I need to show my work during the process. In the editing room, very often I invite friends and I do some test screenings with friends or people I know: editors, journalists sometimes. I ask them, Is it boring? Is it too long? What do you think?

My original idea for this film was to make a documentary, because I loved the real people who told me their stories.