[on Enemy (2013)] There's a part of me that's very attracted to fantastic or sci-fi, and after Polytechnique (2009), Incendies (2010), and knowing I was going to do Prisoners (2013), I felt that I needed to express myself in a film that's more of a fantasy, a distortion of reality. I like those movies a lot. I was a big fan as a kid.

[on his younger brother's (Martin Villeneuve) TED Talk, the fantastical elements and a possible collaboration between the two (in an interview for The Film Stage on March 17, 2014)] My brother is very creative and he's also got some crazy projects.

[on Enemy (2013)] The landscape of a movie is part of the equation that creates the meaning of the movie. On 'Enemy', the book, which takes place in a huge massive metropolitan area that's oppressive, inspires it and it creates fear and paranoia because you feel there are too many souls around you. It gives you a claustrophobic feeling. What is unique about Toronto is there aren't a lot of filmmakers that shoot Toronto for itself - David Cronenberg did and Atom Egoyan has - so in the mind of the audience, Toronto is quite fresh.

[on Enemy (2013)] When you make such a movie - well, like a lot of other movies - that is designed to print images somewhere in the back of your brain, that will haunt you later. It's true that 'Enemy' is a problematic, maybe we should put a warning on it in the beginning [Laughs].

[on Sicario (2015)] It's about the alienation of the cycles of violence, how at one point we are in those spirals of violence and ask ourselves, 'Is there a solution?' My movie raises the question; it doesn't give any answer.

I think cinema is a tool to explore our shadows.

I hate violence, and I think that violence is meaningful if you see the impact of violence on victims. I'm interested on the impact, I'm not interested in the show. I don't want to make a show of violence. I mean, I've been in contact with people who suffered from the trauma of war... When I use violence in a movie it's just to express the power, the impact of it.

[in 2015] Film is pop art. It's not whether it's auteur cinema or not, that's a false distinction. Cinema is cinema.

Cinema is an art form that is designed to go across borders. And as a filmmaker, the only way I can direct a movie is when I feel close to my culture.

[on the concept of boundaries, explored in Enemy (2013)] We all have multiple identities inside of us. I think it's about the power of subconscious and how our actions represent that side of the self - and who is really in control? The influence of the past on our lives and the strength of the past, is something that really impressed me and terrorized me because it means that we aren't totally in control of our actions. I think you can find power over it, but it's a process.

I was at the premiere of Prisoners (2013) and I heard two thousand people scream at the same time. I turned to my girlfriend 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 think they built Hollywood on the West Coast because they were always dreaming of a New World. When they arrived here, the only way to keep dreaming was to make movies. Film was the fourth dimension.

[childhood memory of duck hunting] You go out at 3AM. In a small boat. You see the mist coming off the water as you wait in the reeds. You're with these men. It's so dark and quiet, and then there's this violence, the thunder of guns. I want to make a film about that one day.

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.