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

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 was a lot younger - when I wrote Water Lilies. I was like 26. It felt so natural to write about adolescence.

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

I want to try different genres. I think I'll still be looking at a strong female character in the center, and identity struggle and transformation.

People keep telling me, "You don't like boys!" And I'm saying, "Wow, no, it's just that you're not used to them being objectified in movies, but women are so often objectified in movies and we don't care."

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.