Paul Schrader might not be a Swiftie, but the veteran screenwriter-director admits that he’s in “awe” of the pop megastar.

“It’s not so much the music that captivates me, it’s the phenomenon. The Elvis-ness of it all,” Schrader told Variety. “You have to admire how well she and her team have built this empire.”

The “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” screenwriter is at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where he’s the president of the feature film jury .

Schrader, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Bosnian fest in 2022, is also in town to promote his latest film, “ Oh, Canada ,” which reunites the “American Gigolo” writer-director with leading man Richard Gere after 40 years. The film competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Reflecting on his extensive and productive career, Schrader reminisced about the independent filmmaking scene where he began, initially as a screenwriter for the early, pivotal movies of Martin Scorsese , and later as a director, starting with “Blue Collar” (1978).

The industry “is constantly changing,” said Schrader, who has independently financed recent films, including “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener” and the 2017 Oscar nominee “First Reformed.”

“The financial model is constantly changing — how to make money from the ‘product,’ which is what it is,” he said. “I began in the studio system and made four or five films. That was a different studio system, in the ’60s, ’70s. Then it became the independent film world. And now it's dominated by the streamers.”

Schrader shared that his recent films “have all been rejected by Amazon and Netflix,” adding: “Unless you’re one of the favored filmmakers — and we know who they are, because they get all the attention — if you’re not one of those, your film just vanishes into the streaming void, never to be seen again.”

He pointed to “Mothers’ Instinct,” starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, as an example of a film that received “no support whatsoever” after its streaming release on Prime Video. “That's how they dispose of films these days,” he said.

Schrader also discussed projects that fell through, including a Frank Sinatra biopic that was shelved after the singer's daughter refused to approve the script. Additionally, a Hank Williams project was scrapped after the filmmaker encountered difficulties with music publisher Acuff-Rose.

“In these situations, if you can't secure the music rights, you're out of luck,” he explained. “They might not be able to prevent you from making a film, but they can stop me from using the song. Why make a Sinatra film without his music?”

However, the 78-year-old stated that he doesn’t lose sleep over these missed opportunities.

“He mentioned a line from [Schrader’s 1992 crime thriller] ‘Light Sleeper,’ where [Dana] Delany says to Willem [Dafoe], ‘A convenient memory is a gift from God,'” he explained. “And this is true for filmmaking as well. If you can just not remember the bad stuff, life is so much better.”

The Sarajevo Film Festival runs Aug. 16 – 23.