When it comes to identity, that was an issue that plagued me for a lot of my life. It's something that I wanted to tap into. Film can really take you to other places, and sometimes that's necessary to understand your own identity or someone else's identity or just the issue of identity, in general. It takes you. It's borderless. It's boundless. It's universal.
Cherien DabisIt's why I fell in love with movies. You can sit in a movie theater and be transported to a place that you never get to go and be a person who you never in your life would get to be and feel something and have empathy for people and see things from another point of view.
Cherien DabisI think that you have to have a really specific type of personality to be able to both direct and act, because it requires enormous shifts in perspective. I mean, when you're directing, you're looking at the world through a wide-angle lens, and you're seeing all of it. You know exactly what's happening in every corner of it. You know what people are going to say. You know what they're going to do. You're controlling everything.
Cherien DabisAn interesting thing that I've learned is that "no" doesn't always really mean "no," it just simply means "not now."
Cherien DabisI'm always looking for ways to explore the politics of the everyday. For me, the proverbs were a way of bringing in this ancient wisdom that in Arabic culture is often quoted. Those proverbs are such a huge part of the language and parts of people's every day. This is the wisdom that we use in our everyday life but we're not always listening to.
Cherien Dabis