As a political scientist with many friends in the foreign policy community, I have been disturbed at the quality of media coverage of the Iraq war and occupation. I felt it should be possible to make a film that explained how and why Iraq has disintegrated in a way that was accurate yet accessible to a broad audience–Ferguson

We decided to change the name of the lead character and took certain liberties in compressing the story, which was also necessary for lead actress Katharina Thalbach because she didn't want to perform an imitation. She had the freedom to create her own character that would be believable in the story we wanted to tell–Schlondorff.

The story emerged when we hit upon the scariest, most anxiety-filled, everyday activity we could think of: Parenting. Kids can be scary and the scariest kids are the ones who are smarter than you–George Ratliff, director and co-writer

It didn‚Äôt really start with Goya at all. It began when I was in film school and read a book about the Spanish Inquisition and an incident in which someone had been falsely accused of a crime. There were a great many parallels between the Communist society we lived under and the Spanish Inquisition. I knew a story like this could never be done in Czechoslovakia because of such similarities–Milos Forman

Riyo is not your stereotypically shy and quiet Japanese wife. It's boring if the characters are total villains or total saints. The challenge–and what disappoints me about the portrayals of Asians in the media–is they're so simplistic–Kayo Hatta