In all my work, I'm interested in trying to understand the human consequences of government policies.

I don't speak Arabic - I know a little to get by, but that's all.

Snowden is almost preternaturally prepossessing and self-possessed. I think of a novelist whose dream character just walks into his or her head. It must have been like that with you and Snowden. But what if he'd been a graying guy with the same documents and far less intelligent things to say about them? In other words, how exactly did who he was make your movie and remake our world?

That's a question you'd have to present to people in the White House.

I was in correspondence with an anonymous source for about five months and in the process of developing a dialogue you build ideas, of course, about who that person might be. My idea was that he was in his late forties, early fifties. I figured he must be Internet generation because he was super tech-savvy, but I thought that, given the level of access and information he was able to discuss, he had to be older.

I think it's radical to censor information because the government asks you to. That's radical.

People are starting to understand that the devices we carry with us reveal our location, who we're talking to, and all kinds of other information.