"This extraordinary series, based on the collection of books, portrays the story of two young girls and their friendship over time. What is astounding to me is the agency and the “voice” of the two young prepubescent girls that is shown in ways rarely seen on screen. Psychologist Carol Gilligan, wrote extensively of the ways in which girl’s voices are squashed and eradicated by puberty. Likewise, filmmakers rarely portray this vital stage in young girl’s development. As the series progress and the two girls age, their female characters are impacted, twisted, and crushed by the pressure of society. It’s rare that one actually witnesses the crushing of girls into adults in such an exquisitely truthful manner. How these two girls struggle to survive and thrive under the pressures of marriage and sexuality and lack of educational access clamping down on them with their identity intact is brilliant. At the end of season one, I had the rarest experience: I felt like I had just finished one episode, not eight, as if I was at the very beginning of the story, not the end, and I longed for more narrative to come."

"Ultimately, there is ambition in the Apu Trilogy – he’s leaving his village and he marries into a different class. But there’s also that incredible friendship that runs through the Apu Trilogy. I return to the Apu Trilogy constantly. I saw it first in art school and I felt overwhelmed by it; as someone coming from Miami and who hadn’t seen anything of the world, I was just like, India, it’s too much for me. But for some reason it really resonated and I have returned to it so often. I find Satyajit Ray’s filmmaking so lyrical and there’s a real economy to the way he shoots the film. It’s all just pans; there’s no kind of dual camera movement ever going on. [Cinematographer Christopher] Blauvelt and I had a similar rule, except for when we’re in the Chief Factor’s house, when there’s like this more expressive kind of filmmaking going on and it feels a little grander. We had this really economical way of shooting; people moving in the frame and we pan one way or the other. But there were no parallel moves happening at once."

"It’s such a leftfield film for someone like me, but what is has is a very clear plot and it has two people trapped together inextricably. But what it does so well is that you laugh, you feel embarrassed, and then at the end — I cry my eyes out at the end of that film. Even thinking about it makes me upset. When Steve Martin is on the tube and John Candy gets off and he’s standing with his bag and he realises there is no one. It’s just such a beautiful thing. You can clearly see from Midnight Cowboy and Planes, Trains that there’s a pattern with me, and it’s really about loving other men – in a non-sexual way. It’s such a big thing for me — I value my friendships with my male friends. I’ve got a fiancé as well, and she’s certainly part of the action, but it’s a very different thing and you can’t get the same sort of friendship with a woman that you can with a man. And interestingly the filmmaking in Planes, Trains isn’t great. It looks so bad, it’s really televisual, but it’s got massive heart. ”"