Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.

Making art, being creative, is risky, especially for actors, but everybody on the set is being creative. You're putting yourself out there with ideas, and to have your brain be free of stress so that it can actually do its best work, it feels like you want to have a real sense of intimacy and connection and trust with everybody.

So many people have said this, but it's true: 95 percent of what I do as a director is casting and getting people who can bear the load of what you're asking them to do and creating this emotionally safe environment.

I'd love for there to be a situation - a world in which that's just not even a question anymore. We are all filmmakers - different stripes, genders, sexual orientations, colors - and our work can be taken on its own terms. I'm really looking forward to that day.

Before adolescence I had an incredible voice. Like when I was 12, 13, 14 - I was taking acting classes, I was painting, I was making music, I was taking photographs. I was kind of exploding creatively, and then something about adolescence really just ground that out of me.

I feel like this is the way I was meant to interact with acting. Which is as a director, and helping, working with actors to find their way. Facilitating their performances is so satisfying for me.

I just really feel so grateful to Sundance because I've always been an artist and I've never been able to make a living at being an artist until Sundance.