I happened to be in Los Angeles when Spielberg’s ‘Schindler’s List’ came out. Seeing it, I felt two reactions: great emotion, and a strong conviction that the story of the Shoah couldn’t always go on being told in the same way, in the register of tears and horror. Back home in Paris, a historian friend got to talking over dinner about some Jews who escaped on a train during the war, an almost incredible story. He urged me to make a film about it, a somber story about my roots and people. ‘A comedy!’ I answered. He was taken aback. But I felt that the combination of comic and tragic would have an extraordinary effect. I had a hunch that this was the way I had to go. (Radu Mihaileanu)