The French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand saw his film The Barbarian Invasions win two major prizes at Cannes in 2003, picking up awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actress. The film reunites the cast members of one of the Quebecer's best-known earlier works, The Decline Of The American Empire, which was originally released in 1987.

Why did you decide to make a film in which the main character Rémy (played by Rémy Girard) is dying of cancer?

It's to do with my old age! When you grow older, you become older and more familiar, whether you like it or not, with illnesses and hospital corridors. I lost both my parents to cancer. My teachers at my university are now dead, as are the people who first taught me filmmaking, and so are some of my friends. As a filmmaker you want to write about what you go through. The problem I found was that the scripts I was coming up with were very bleak and desperate, the sort of things I'd never go and see as a film-goer. Then I had the idea of going back to the characters from The Decline Of The American Empire, who are so cynical and funny. They meant that I could tackle the subject with the kind of levity and comedy I was looking for.

Why did you choose this particular title?

I started thinking about the title of the earlier film The Decline Of The American Empire, and I thought about what happened at the end of the Roman Empire, when the Barbarians started to invade. While I was writing the script, the terrorist attacks on September 11 happened, and I realised The Barbarian Invasions was the perfect title.

Why did you make the character of the young woman Nathalie (played by Marie-Josée Croze, who won the Best Actress Prize at Cannes) a heroin addict?

Lots of my friends' children in the filmmaking world were lost to drugs and died before their parents, and I wanted that to be in my film somewhere. Rémy himself is sick and he needs drugs so Nathalie supplies him with them. It's a way of establishing a relationship with her and this older guy, because she's the only one who understands him perfectly. She's living close to death.

Do you find that viewers tend to identify Rémy's jaundiced views of the world with yours?

I am not Rémy. The big difference between us is that he's an academic who has never done a thing in his life - he's talked and he's taught and he's chased women. In my case I've made films all my life. I've worked like a dog and my life has been very full. On my deathbed I hope I'll be able to say I worked at this as hard as I could and that I gave it my best shot.

The film seems very pessimistic on a wider political level about American imperialism, but optimistic about how individuals can change and grow...

Absolutely. There isn't much we can do about American imperialism. Whatever we do, I'm not sure whether Donald Rumsfeld is going to change his opinion. He won't. We live on the micro-level - that's where we find happiness and accomplishment.