As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world.

A country that fails to value its teachers, fails to value its future.

In the U.K., the history of regulation, certainly regulation of the media, is one in which, time and again, successive governments lacked the 'bottle' to enforce the powers that were available to them.

I'm not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems.

My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.

Without any doubt at all, teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just, incidentally, of education, but I would argue, probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century.

What is certain is that plurality and diversity are not, and never can be, a natural 'byproduct' of unregulated market forces.