Film is endlessly just beyond your reach. I think that's what I love so much about it.

I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.

Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced.

I don't really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.

I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.

Humans are vulnerable, messy little animals and that's normal. And all I want to do is make a space for that in my films.