Olivier Assayas

I felt a constant responsibility.

When you make a movie, it's a very powerful tool.

There is always the risk that your audience will take whatever fiction you're building within the film.

framework of adapting a novel is something that becomes more believable than reality itself.

There is a war going on with actual people dying.

You're trying to be as true as possible to the facts, and you have a responsibility towards the people who are fighting today in Ukraine.

to represent as fairly as possible the events that led to that war.

And obviously I was extremely concerned with respecting and being as empathetic as I could to the actual brutality, violence, cruelty that the Ukrainian people are suffering today.