With 'Suffragette,' I was emboldened that there were so many women around me. We had a female writer, producers, production and costume designers.
Surround yourself with people who support you. Find champions.
My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.
I was taught nothing about the suffragettes in school. The version I eventually got was mainly about the peaceful campaigning of the constitutional suffragists. Their work was vital, but there was this other, not widely known story of the women who risked everything, who were prepared to break every taboo.
It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement.
It was only when I saw films in my early 20s by Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Sally Potter and Kathryn Bigelow, I started to think, 'Oh, it's possible.' I dared to suggest that I wanted to train to be a film director.
I'm so aware how often women's bodies are objectified on film.
I'd made this film called 'This Little Life,' and it went round the fests and won awards and did well.
Just going to Bangladesh was an experience... if you go into small villages in the U.K., they're backward and culturally devoid. But if you go into small villages in Bangladesh, they have classical music concerts.
In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.
I suppose 'This Little Life' and 'Brick Lane' both have things in common in that they have a female protagonist very much at the centre of the story, and they're subjectively told.
I made lots of short films, about nine or ten short films. And then I made a television film called 'This Little Life.'
Remember to use your vote. Remember to speak out and feel empowered.
So many women don't have voices in their governments.
Having the vote is just symbolic. There are still many issues on which women don't have any right and, in many countries, where women are given very very few rights.
I would love to see more diversity on all sides, and not just in terms of women; we need people from different walks of life making films.
Niaqornat particularly seemed to offer a heightened version of a story being played out across the world about traditional communities' struggle for survival and their attempts to renegotiate their identity in the face of modern life.
The late Victorian Era brought in part-time education. Not everybody went to school, but they were supposed to have a decent level of schooling; they went part-time after 12.
The suffragettes realized the power of getting arrested and going to prison and harassing politicians and making a nuisance of themselves. It got them a lot of attention. What they never did was set out to endanger human life except for sacrificing themselves.
I'm very interested in cinema that explores emotional journeys and where you can use everything at your disposal cinematically to locate you inside someone's head and their emotional landscape.
