The movie not only about what story you're telling and who you're looking at. It's mostly about how you're telling it and how you're looking at it. And people who don't like it, who say, "Oh, it's not 'true' because you're looking at it in a stylized way" - it's a movie and it's fiction, so it's also a lot in the artistic direction that it is political.

I like the idea of a trilogy. It's cool. I like the word. When you do four, the word isn't cool - not as cool.

Obviously, I can't tell the story of what it is to be a black girl, but maybe I can tell something else. Girlhood is not about what it's like to be a black girl, it's about what it's like to be a girl.

I mean, putting women in the center of a movie and not talking about men, that's already political, right? And you know, political doesn't mean that it sends this message or that is has a statement. It's also political in its aesthetic project.

I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.

I think I like about coming-of-age stories is that there's everything in them. It's a genre that kind of contains everything: you have the chronicle, you can go into naturalism, but it's also about transforming physically, so it's kind of a fantastical genre.

Being in a group is a way to actually to speak up, and define yourself in the comfort, and the complexity of the group.