In Enter the Void you use special effects to create an impressionistic, internal reality rather than a sharp, fully-realized external one.
There’s a lot of CGI in the movie. A lot of the aerial shots above Tokyo or when we go through the movies, they were made with computer graphics. Also the penis inside a vagina was computer generated by a visual effects company. But we also added later…visual dirt, flicker, out of focus effects just to make the film more hypnotic and dreamier. Actually it works. It doesn’t really look like an acid trip or a mushroom trip but at the same time it kind of gets you stoned because the image is shaking all the time, or moving all the time, flickering all the time.

This film has drawn comparisons to some of the great psychedelic movies — 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially. What films inspired you?
The hallucinogenic scenes in 2001 are amazing. They feel more like DMT than LSD to me. I know that Kubrick didn’t do any clinicals at the time — he says that in his interviews. But maybe Douglas Trombel had. Some experimental shorts from the ’60s were amazing. Like Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome by Kenneth Anger or some of Jordan Belson’s shorts, like Samadhi.