I feel like there's more of a need to tell more optimistic stories.

I think it's important to sort of normalize male nudity on screen, because women are always naked. And none of the male nudity in the film, I think, is unnecessarily provocative. It's meant to be everyday.

My father is a cultural anthropologist and my mother ran an outpatient clinic and treated a lot of people who had been institutionalised. I was very fascinated with behaviour and criminology and why people do things that don't make any sense. I would probe my mother: "Why? Why would somebody do this?" And look for some causality between someone's mental state and their behaviour. I think it had a lot of influence on me.

I feel like there's more of a need to tell more optimistic stories.

Brooklyn has become a brand, and it represents something, and there is this tension between the old and new world.