The digital revolution has had a democratizing effect. Now anyone can be a filmmaker, but to be a good filmmaker is as hard as it ever was.

Destiny doesn't control your life, but it does place you on a path. It's how you walk down that path that determines stories I tell.

If you make a great film full of emotion, of pathos, people want to continue to know more, to work harder.

I believe that those who believe in the power of human rights must find new ways to address economic injustice - and on a scale commensurate with the millions of people around the world that are mired in poverty.

When you make a documentary film, after many years the only thing you remember is what you put into the film, not what you took out.

My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery.

I'm both an artist / filmmaker and a human rights defender.