Palestine is an extremely familiar place to me. Someone like me who lives everywhere in the world cannot be contained. If my hope and ambitions are in the right place, you can judge that in my films. I want to make films that diffuse any local notion. Cinema criss-crosses borders and check points. If the film is good, then it's universal.

To think that we are disconnected in some way serves the occupation whether it's through indifference or a distancing. It is a colonial approach of making you a subject and them the spectators. That is disturbing and counterproductive. And then suddenly they are surprised or find it alienating that the microcosmic effects of Palestine are happening in the U.S., France, and England, whether it's from the Islamic movements or immigration factors. Keeping a false purity of their countries will harm them eventually.

I'm trying to use Palestine as a microcosm of the world, but maybe the world is a microcosm of Palestine. We're living in a moment that has lost attachment to the ideology behind boundaries.

Silence can be intimidating, sometimes provocative, sometimes a form of resistance because it dislocates.

Someone like myself is not from one place. I am in total identification with the New York, French, and Palestine experience and do not stop at the borders of identity.

I don't really know what people's perception about Palestinians.All art is to better life. We want to create hope and share with others. Create more pleasure, and object to despair. Really it's about that. A space where we can be less aggressed upon.

I am more at peace than I've ever known myself to be. My connectedness to the world is more intense. I am more attentive to the humanity around me.