Essentially, my kids grew up with the emphasis on the environment because I became a political activist in about 1969 and it was not an easy time. Those were the days when the oil and gas companies pretty much controlled the show and anybody speaking about solar energy or carbon energy would get smashed down as being a radical or a tree-hugger or what have you. So I was out there feeling very often alone and my kids would get that.

We program the festival, after 20 years, exactly the way we did on the first day.

It's a creative enterprise, just like art, just like painting, music. Creating something can be done in different categories, so to do it in film is just another expression, which is great. Because it translates so well because so many people see the work, if you're lucky.

What we are living with is the result of human choices and it can be changed by making better, wiser choices.

I enjoyed working with Dustin Hoffman. That was really fun. He decided that to really be effective as Woodward and Bernstein, considering their differences, we should spend some time together. Because Dustin and I were very different.

The meter is ticking [particularly in the face of climate change], so you've got to get to as much as you can as fast as you can. I grew up with 'This Land Is Our Land,' and public land doesn't belong to that administration or this one. We want our kids to grow up with real natural places, not just photos of them.

I was raised in California during the Second World War and into the '50s and everything was fine, everything was great. The sun always shone, everybody looked healthy and wore ties and smoked in restaurants, and there were cars for everybody - except us, because I came from a lower class neighbourhood. But [in France] I realised there was a different point of view, so when I came back to America a year and a half later I was much more focused on my own country culturally and politically.