When you were growing up were you a big cinema fan?
Yes, but very limited. I was in a boarding school in Shimla, in the Himalayas, and we saw a movie once every two weeks. Once a month we were allowed out in town where we saw films and we'd see three or four films at a time, but only Bollywood. My father was in Iran and after nine months the school would be snowed in and we would go to Iran for our holidays. There we saw a hell of a lot of American television, which is dubbed into Persian. I never understood the dialogue, so I watched a lot of American stuff and never understood if it was supposed to be funny or not. Things like Get Smart were really cool but we just thought a guy with a phone in his shoe wasn't funny. We thought it was like opera. When you've grown up on Hindi movies you can't possibly think anything can be over the top. So those were my two visual influences in childhood.

The French government is to introduce a tax credit to encourage filmmakers from around the world to make films in France. Productions shot in France will now get back 20 per cent of the production costs of the movie. This follows a decision from the French parliament just before Christmas to extend the domestic tax credit to all the world’s film and television makers.