The good thing from my perspective is that nobody puts any pressure on me to say what it's going to be. The backers accept that they don't know what they are going to get.

I feel very much ideologically, politically if you like, and emotionally part of the European cinema.

But films should be voyeuristic. What else is a film if you’re not snooping into somebody else’s lives?

Given the events of even the 19th century, Zionism was inevitable. Given the events of the 20th century, Israel was inevitable.

If a film or any piece of work doesn't entertain, it fails - and that is using the word entertain literally, meaning it holds you there and you become absorbed by it so that you don't walk away and get bored and so on.

My job apart from anything else is to build an ensemble composed of actors who all come from a secure place so that they can all work together to make the film.

I really think people are greatly stimulated and enriched by experiencing in film just as we can from novels and other art, experiencing things that resonate with what our lives are about. I think people really want to know... want to share, want to have the stimulus to think and care about the way they live their lives, the way they relate to other people, their aspirations, their hopes, et cetera.