I think that I get different kinds of joy out of directing a film and acting, and it's sort of necessary to just be doing one and focusing on that. I'm in awe of anyone who tries to be an actor-director, so I couldn't really see that.

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'm never sure what's coming next, but I'm an open minded person and I welcome any challenge.

I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.

I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.

Well, because Dawn of the Dead can take place anywhere and it shows that actually the entire planet is contaminated, I would say that it shows the new face of our world - one person, one race, united against the invisible destructive force.

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.