In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.

That's one of the central challenges we face - how to stay true to events and compress the fundamentals.

You face challenges and you have to make choices. You're weighing the necessary responsibility toward reality and authenticity and of course the need to create a compressed drama over two hours.

There's a film you write, there's a film you shoot, and there's a film that you cut - and they're all different.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script and it's very linear.

There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script and then you cut that and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it.

You're trying to create a screenplay and your screenplay is there to give you a structure, rigidity, situational awareness, who the characters are, what do they want, what's the shape of the thing.