I am an American woman

Katja Nicodemus interviews Lars von Trier, originally in Die Zeit, over at Signandsight:

You seem to be fascinated by power relationships. With the Dogma rules, you formulated an aesthetic manifesto and your last two films "Dogville" and "Manderlay" are based on strict formal principles. What so interests you about guidelines and rules?

I come from a family of communist nudists. I was allowed to do or not do what I liked. My parents were not interested in whether I went to school or got drunk on white wine. After a childhood like that, you search for restrictions in your own life.

But communists actually have very strict rules.

That's true, but that's where things start to get very complicated. All my life I've been interested in the discrepancy between philosophy and reality, between conviction and its implementation. The general assumption is that all people are able to differentiate more or less equally between good and evil. But if this is the case, why does the world look like it does? Why have all the good intentions of my parents come to nothing. And why do my own good intentions lead to nothing?