Lately I did a film called All I Want for Christmas and it was well received. This gave me a new point of view and a new respect for my work as an actress.

With being a mother, I feel like you choose how you spend your time so much more carefully - which is a good thing.

So I decided to make a film about our need to tell stories, to own our stories, to understand them, and to have them heard.

We're in this space right now where things are very precarious for women and things in the States are so terrifying. There are so many rollbacks of rights women have gained - and it can happen quickly, more quickly than we think. I think it would be good for us to think back and ahead to protect the space we're in.

I was concerned about that, because I've always been so specific about doing independent films, but I've never done anything that's so genuinely and ridiculously fun. And that's a great thing, for me to discover that that's possible.

All of my short films are about marriages, and I think that this probably comes from some kind of unconscious fascination with my parents' story and what they went through.

I feel like I've always had two selves - the part of me that makes films and the part of me that's political, and they haven't really connected that much. Alias Grace talks about things like class and immigration and women's rights, which felt really good. But especially now, there are pressing things to be said. It's a really scary time in the world. It's a very scary thing to have an American president who openly brags about assaulting women and is openly racist. This isn't a moment to be speaking in metaphors.