What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?

Heterosexual women who've had long-term relationships see their man fall apart. They go, "I'm giving him my whole life - I'm giving him my love, I'm cooking for him, he's got this great sex, he's got everything. Why is he so miserable all of a sudden? Why does he want to get away with his buddies and look at other girls? What is his problem?" It seems like something that happens to men, they feel like their manliness has been chipped away and destroyed by being with just one woman. They feel resentful and they're passive-aggressive.

We women have gained so many more things, but we lost that kind of sexual power, the glamour power. We still love women who can still do that in culture.

Cinema can transform pain and trauma into something beautiful.

I think a lot of women who are celebrities and who are very beautiful have terrible problems with their men being very controlling. Women allow themselves to be dominated and controlled by men in all sorts of other ways that are very complicated, you know? I don't really see a lot of women engaging in discussions about the struggles and power relations with men and their lives, like their bosses, boyfriends, husbands, coworkers. I don't see that happening very often, whereas I see a lot of misogyny on the internet. I see a lot of hatred towards women and a lot of fear of women.

I see being a woman in the world as a social problem. That's very urgently problematic in terms of it still being a man's world, and women's identities still being shaped by the way men look at them, and the way men can control what kinds of opportunities they can get based on how desirable the men find them, or how compliant. I don't think that's really changed a lot.

Every time I get criticism from people, I learn from it and what to do the next time so there are fewer misconceptions. I'm continuing to be socialized as a woman, but also as a filmmaker.