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.

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 all movies are political. The ones that are not political intentionally are the worst, and have the worst politics, I think.

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.

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