The film is astonishingly ambitious, both technically and philosophically.

What set you on the path to such a film?

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I read books on reincarnation and many books about out-of-body experiences.

Actually, the movie is not so much about reincarnation.

I dont believe in life after death.

Like flying saucers are a collective need for people who need to believe in flying saucers.

You dont need to believe in flying saucers to do a movie about Martians or flying saucers.

you’re able to survive and always rearrange things that happened in your lifetime.

Thats what all religions rely on.

But those are brainwashing tools to make people take their money and bring it to the churches.

Hes recreating a false memory of that traumatic moment that was his birth when he discovered light and oxygen.

You dont really know what happened after he got shot.

The only part that is really specific is the beginning.

Kubrick said something about2001, that its an acid religious movie.

You mentioned the trip that turns bad at the beginning.

Its almost like its own separate film.

How much input did you have in that sequence?

You forget that you have a human form and that youre on a planet.

It was almost like professional research.

Sorry, what was the question?

I want the shapes of the underwater forms of life.

I want them to be made of neon lights and I want the background to be black.

It has to be scary.

You feel that youre going through a tunnel.

The DMTs inside your brain already.

Because of a car crash, because of fear, because of this or that.

The films psychedelic use of colour, it reminded me of Japanese videogames and Japanese anime.

Tokyos like a huge pinball machine.

The lights are changing, the neon lights are moving.

I love their cinema, I love their nightclubs, I love being there.

I thought Tokyo would be the very best place to shoot this movie.

And, of course, if you get busted with any drugs in Japan its very bad news.

Not only if youre arrested with a small piece of a joint.

So, the tensions much higher.

I didnt want the guy to be a big drug dealer.

A lots been talked about the visual aspect of the film, but the audio side is also fascinating.

You know the band Coil?

I used another one calledANS, where he used a Russian synthesiser.

His music for Coil and Throbbing Gristle was trippy.

It almost creates an altered state in itself.

Whatever helps to make the audience feel stoned was good.

And its like zoom!

And people come down shaking from the screening room, and say what a trip!

and it takes them five minutes or so before they say anything else!

Gaspar Noe, thank you very much.