PHILIPPE FALARDEAU

I'm not too keen on jokes that are one-liners. I want the situation to be funny.

In the province of Quebec where I come from, we speak French, and the only cosmopolitan city is Montreal. Every time we tackle the subject of immigration and racial tension, it's an issue that concerns Montreal.

The first person to make me realize there was someone behind the film was Steven Spielberg.

I work, play and do everything in French.

When you're younger, and you do your first or second film, you want to show everyone what you can do.

I studied political science and international relations, so I never considered myself an artist.

Once you're on the set and shooting, it's all just cinema. You have actors and cameras.

In Quebec, we're less inhibited artistically, culturally, politically. We're less focused on box office and comparing our films to the American films.

If you're writing a screenplay from scratch, it involves a lot of creation.

In Canada, we have so much land, so much space, and so few people.

I would love to write a script where the main character is a woman. I know I can direct a film where the main character is a woman. I cannot write that film.

I think cinema is the memory and the imagination of the country. Take the memory and imagination out of an individual, and he stops being an individual. I think it's the same thing for a country.

When I'm actually making a film and trying to find solutions, I like to watch making-of documentaries about huge films, like 'Gladiator.' That couldn't be more apart from what I'm doing, but you see Ridley Scott facing huge problems and fixing them.

I studied political science and international relations and had the intention of becoming a journalist or work in foreign affairs. I had no intention of making a film.

Now I realize that I have to let everyone take what they have to take from the film. No matter what I think about the film, it becomes a little irrelevant. I think I would say that the film is trying to show us that - and I spoke about that earlier - we have to let the teachers invest in their own classroom. There's no use in trying to control everything. Education is fundamental.

My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.

There is some humor in Monsieur Lazhar and in all my other films, but this one I'll try to make a real comedy from start to finish. It's called Prescott Etc. because the name of the constituency is so long that everybody in the constituency just says Prescott Etc. I don't know if that's what it will be. It's a working title.

That's grossing money for other people that has a multiplying factor, but the government doesn't see that. It doesn't see that making a film or culture or art is part of our economy. But the main reason is this, it's part of our identity. I think cinema is the memory and the imagination of the country. Take the memory and imagination out of an individual and he's stops being an individual.

We also have this reflex of using specialists for everything, instead of having the person who is there every day with them, the teacher, talk about death and suicide. In the film, it's portrayed a little bit like a caricature, but it's the psychologist who comes in and Monsieur Lazhar does not think it's a good idea. He thinks he should be the one who should talk about that with the children.

We get through life and this is part of the education process also. In real life, we meet bad bosses and good bosses and good friends and bad friends. I think we should let the teachers do their work and not impose too much stuff on them.

I think it's the same thing for a country. We are lucky then that we can get some financing from the government, because it means when I get the money, when I get the grant to do the film, of course it's based on the script, but I have total artistic control and I can do personal stuff.

Even if I knew that Separation would probably win, when they announced the film, I was thinking to myself "Oh! I want this! I want this!" And so, when we didn't win, I got depressed for about 20 minutes, and then I snapped out of it and enjoyed the rest of the evening.

Again, something that's very strange and odd, you will find sometimes that immigrants that have been here for many years and already have their citizenship might be the ones against additional immigration. We've seen that also.

What I know is that if I was asked to teach mathematics in French for a week to young kids, I would do my homework and I think I could do a decent job. I don't think a degree in education would make me a better teacher. I sometimes teach in college. I don't teach for long periods of time, but I give workshops and I think I can communicate stuff. So, it's about communicating.

The teacher will never be a parent. The parents are the parents. But they have to engage in some sort of active education beyond just teaching mathematics and French and English because the kids spend more time there than they do with their parents at that age. We have to accept that other adults will be part of our children's education and they will have bad teachers. That's going to happen.