In the Eighties, the landscape was changing. No one knew if they had a future. It's not like now. There was no satellite. Kids were still out on the streets playing all the time. For me, it was the last great hurrah! People don't take those chances anymore. Everyone's far too reserved. Men look like women, women look like men.

I'm obviously first and foremost a British filmmaker on a global scale, but when it comes to narrowing it down, I really feel like my voice is in the Midlands and outside of London.

You have to make a film and make it interesting, so you can't have a shot of you cleaning your teeth just because you did that. It's boring!

The violence at the end is about personal torture.

I haven't forgotten what it was like to be a kid; especially a misunderstood one

There were more people against going into Iraq than there were going into the Falklands... but the shame I carry as a British resident, was that it was a war handled in the media as if it were a World Cup summer. Like when England go into the World Cup, there are Union Jacks on the papers, and you can look at headlines from the time and it sounded just like that. Ultimately, I was privy to footage from ITN archives - that wasn't shown on television - of the people we were fighting, and it was shameful. It was bullying. It was really horrible. How could we have been proud of winning that?

Bullying and violence that exists in someone can also be inherent in a nation without us knowing it.