Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick's vision was so complete there.

The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It's about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it's worth getting your teeth into.

I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.

My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.

The policies we debate and enact in Congress have a real impact on people across the country. Climate change, immigration, economic inequality - each of these issues have become hot button, partisan topics, but support or opposition on these pressing issues shouldn't come down to party.

I have a pretty positive view of environmental activism, but I didn't know much about the ELF. A lot of people make documentaries because they have something they want to say, but I make them because there's something I want to explore.

I have a very nice garden and extraordinary markets, where there are products from the earth and the sea, in the French Basque country.

When I visited the Water Institute's Baton Rouge offices overlooking the Mississippi River, I couldn't find a drop of the charged politics that drives so many environmental conversations in Washington.