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Peter Strickland wrote: Working within an existing genre allows you to instantly set-up expectations, so in that sense you already have a head-start in terms of how you can manipulate an audience. Any viewer expecting a rape-revenge will not get their money’s worth, but hopefully that initial surprise or disappointment can prove enriching. Also working within a genre has its restrictions, which force you as a writer and director to push against those barriers. It’s far more creatively stimulating to work within a set of rules or framework. If I asked you to write a story about a gourmet, his doctor and a mule on a raft, you’d probably come up with something. However, if I asked you to write about anything, it wouldn’t be so stimulating. So to work with existing rules and archetypes allows you to perhaps subvert them or at least put the humanity back into archetypes. The music that I really respond to also works within restrictions, and I think there is far more creative freedom when you place those barriers upon yourself instead of just indulging.

There’s also this feeling that so much has been done on this subject yet we still have so far to go in terms of what we can communicate about it. Some viewers have been angered by the fact that the rapist in ‘Katalin Varga’ is portrayed so sympathetically. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I as a person or as a filmmaker have forgiven him. The crux of this set-up was to ‘stay out of it’ because as soon as I give my opinion whether in interview or blatantly onscreen, the audience potentially don’t think for themselves so much. It really was essential to avoid anything didactic. If the assailant continues to act like the assailant, the audience potentially haven’t engaged. So the set-up is there to disappoint and ultimately reward. By not showing the rape, by not having any closure and by not having the ‘bad guy’ be the bad guy that you want him to be. It is human nature to want bad people to remain bad, so we can justify our condemnation. Some people don’t want to be proved wrong! It is frustrating both for the viewer and for Katalin that someone who did something so terrible can be so reformed, but sorry for the cliché – this is life, and how do we deal with this? The film does turn this question on us – our judgement or sense of justice as an audience. Who administers justice? What point of view do we adopt? – Katalin’s justice, traditional legal justice, divine justice, audience justice, justice of the other characters in the film? If we had made this film from the point-of-view of ‘the police’ fella who kills Katalin at the end, it would be a ‘happy’ ending. He doesn’t know why she killed his brother-in-law. For me, those two characters are in harmony at the end. He feels as fully justified as her.

The aspect of revenge is also a hall of mirrors and I also wanted to show the collateral damage. The Gergely character is a sleaze and he’s not remotely endearing, but usually we as an audience wouldn’t consider the consequences of his murder. As soon as we and Katalin hear that he has kids, the dynamic changes. It should be stressed that although this might be a lot of fun to write with all these shifts, this is real life. The film is not realistic at all to me, but the emotional truth within is. I’m only presenting a logical consequence of events that one would encounter in real life if taking a path of revenge.

Revenge is the one crime that will always be a grey area. It’s the only crime that pretty much every human could consider. It’s a crime full of contradictions both politically and religiously and it is relevant. It’s an endless labyrinth and if I knew the answers, I wouldn’t have made this film.