- Nikita Mikhalkov said that you are "elusive", Regis Wargnier said that "you are not simple", and Sandrine Bonnaire - that "you protect yourself a lot".
- Nevertheless I believe I am neither complicated, nor mysterious, nor closed. The truth is that I choose to carry on a profession that helps me to know myself, to understand -as the doctor I play in Wargnier's film - why I am on this earth. There is some selfishness in it.

- During the shooting, you were considered stand-offish.
- It's because I don't speak French at all and the others didn't speak Russian. So it was very complicated. I had to hold aloof every day to learn my part phonetically. As I always needed a translator, the conversation was of course restricted. But it was good for the couple we were on screen with Sandrine Bonnaire, because it's a couple in which husband and wife don't understand each other anymore. The wife ignores the fact that her husband sacrifices himself for her salvation.

- How did you meet Regis Wargnier?
- During the Sotchi film festival in 1996. He knew me already because he saw me in Bodrov's film "The Prisoner of the Mountains". And I adored "Indochina", a smash hit in Russia.

- Regis Wargnier said it was difficult for him to collect evidences about the black period of Stalinism, as a kind of fear, of paranoia remained among the Russian people. What do you think about that?
- My generation is not concerned. I knew nothing, for example, about the coming back of Russian refugees in 1946. I knew a little about the communal flats but I experienced neither stifling nor lack of freedom. I lived at a period, where people already mocked at the old ones - stupefied and sodden with drinking - who ruled over the land.

- What do you think of Boris Yeltsin?
- I only feel compassion for him.