Would you say that repression is healthy?
In general, yes. If it helps you go on with your life. As a method, it's not bad. But once it's out, you have to deal with it. But I'm not against repression. It's part of life.
Would you have been better off if you had never remembered?
It works differently for each person. But if it works, repressing, go for it. Not everyone has to dig into their past traumatic memories in order to survive. For some, it's just the other way around.
Is it important for a country to face up to its past to escape repeating it?
I don't know. It's very difficult for me to talk in a national way of thinking or making conclusions about that. I'm not sure I'm the right guy. I really try to stay on a very personal level of things. I've read a lot of stuff, implications people take from the film about national repression, national guilt, national here, national there. I can't really cope with it because it's defining the film, categorizing it beyond what the filmmaker should do. I've completed my work when the film is screened.
But you'd describe it as an anti-war film.
It is.
You don't think that war is a solution regardless of the circumstances?
Unfortunately not. I haven't seen any wars since the Second World War that couldn't have been prevented. In my region, I think that since the Six-Day War not enough has been done to prevent war.
If you went back to when you were 19 and knew what you know now, would you have acted defferently?
It depends. I think in my generation refusing to go into the army or to go to war would have been pretty much impossible. You would have been banned from society, and it was not a thing that people did. It's different today. And it's good that it's different. We live in a different era. Completely.
