Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It's like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.

I am hopeful that films can connect people who are in conflict in a separated world.

When I was 27, I won an honorable mention in a scriptwriting contest and got a television job as an assistant director.

My mother was really against it when I said I wanted to make films. She said that I should be a civil servant because that was safe, and it had security. But my mother was always very proud of my movies and would give videocassettes of them to all the neighbours.

At some point, parents may become inured to a child's self-destruction, but I never did.

I never got to play as a child. All my spare time was spent working on my family's smallholding.

I was always very dramatic - my family would probably use the word 'dramatic' - as a child; always putting on performances, making everyone come watch, and pay to watch. I was very business-savvy as a child.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.