Lenny Abrahamson

“'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.”

“I've been in rooms where people are discussing films that have yet to come out and saying delightedly, 'Oh, I've heard it's a disaster!' The jealousy is unseemly.”

“It drove me as a kid. I couldn't bear the idea that I wasn't the smartest. Then I got put in a B stream for four years at my school. And that was the making of me in a weird way.”

“There are more ways to make 'Room' badly than well.”

“The style of direction in 'Room,' maybe a little bit like 'Spotlight,' tries to be hidden.”

“'Room' was a particularly cohesive group, crew and cast.”

“As a filmmaker, I've sat on the other side, and I've watched when people I know have a film, and it's doing really well, and people are talking about it in all the trades, and everybody is excited about it, and I've always thought, 'Hmm, what would that be like?'”

“I always felt there was a kind of humanistic impulse in my thinking about film as well as a real interest in its formal and aesthetic properties - just this idea that it can bring you into a very intimate encounter with people.”

“I remember a Q&A I did in Wales where there were five people in the auditorium.”

“It's very important to have a good relationship with the crew and cast because you want to get the best out of them. They'll work really hard for you if they like you.”

“Ireland is a good place to start out as a filmmaker. If what you do is good, even at a very small scale, it will get recognized.”

“I'm looking for an intensity of focus. It's a bit like tuning a guitar string. You tighten and tighten, and nothing really changes until you hit that tension, and suddenly it's there: you've got a note.”

“I'm Irish; I grew up in Ireland, and it's impossible to separate my background from who I am as a filmmaker.”

“Established actors will challenge you if they don't agree with the way you are taking it, and you have to argue it. But with a younger cast, they are more likely to wonder whether what they are doing is okay instead of trying to second guess the director. That helps push you.”

“Cinema at its best can express something of the pure irreducible fact of things.”

“I came from a classic, literate, intellectual Jewish family.”

“As soon as you make some films that people like, you'll be sent material, and that can come from anywhere.”

“I went to Poland for the Warsaw Film Festival, and it was quite an intense experience. I didn't think it would be, but it did feel quite emotional to go back to this place I'd heard so much about.”