The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.

You have to just dive over the edge. You haven't got time to mess about.

If I had a gun to my head and I had to choose between theater and film I'd choose theater.

I'm interested in the spirits of people. In the theatre, there's the acting part of acting - and I'm not saying that can't be great - and there's the essence. To explore that essence, you need a key, a look, a gesture, an insight that unlocks the person's soul.

The tensions between authority and the people need to be heard, especially when they are suffering and they can't eat.

News reports can overwhelm us. We can be appalled, we can sympathise. But what is hard to grasp is the sense that, at this moment, people are working, organising - not just at an executive level, but on the floor, in the warehouse. A man is packing a box of oral rehydration tablets; maternity kits are being prepared; education kits are being packed. And somewhere, tomorrow, those boxes will be unpacked and a child with life-threatening diarrhoea will be saved, a baby will be born in more hygienic circumstances, a girl will receive her first exercise book and her first pencil.

You feel yourself working to show something. I've learned to distrust that feeling.