Niki Caro

“I recognised that femininity and strength are not mutually exclusive, and I think that femininity has often been equated with weakness, but we know it's not.”

“It's a privilege to tell stories on film. It can be a great community to live a professional life. All of us that do this work should feel very grateful that we can.”

“I think about things like the ability to communicate a vision, strength to create an environment where the actors fell very safe and where they can maybe they can work without e protecting themselves they can really stretch. These qualities are neither male nor female.”

“I come from a place that is very politically sophisticated and progressive. New Zealand was the first place to give women the right to vote.”

“The problem for me, with most movies for children, is that the filmmakers make the mistake of making it too simplistic. Where a child's world can be very complex, emotionally.”

“I take particular care in authenticity and specificity when working in cultures not my own. Every aspect of the filmmaking here was meticulously researched, and not just by me but across every department.”

“I never had a mentor. God, it would have been nice, but I just didn't. I look up to Jane Campion. And my most favorite director Lynne Ramsay.”

“It's interesting - the things you remember about Chariots of Fire is the slow running on the beach and the Vangelis music.”

“I'm very conscious of what I consider to be the first audience of any movie that I make. It's those people whose reactions I'm most attentive to. They're the ones who will tell me whether I've done my job or not.”

“I've had my best experience as a filmmaker with true stories about real people and real cultures.”

“Whale Rider' was a very authentic and specific movie about the indigenous culture from where I come. Amazingly, by the fact it was so authentic and so specific, it became really powerfully universal.”

“A film like 'Whale Rider' is equally truthful, perhaps more so, to the Maori experience; Maori people respond to 'Whale Rider' because it's a world that they understand.”

“The Maori culture is different than our culture where we're most likely to introduce ourselves by email or fax and we conduct a lot of business in an impersonal way, whereas for Maori, the only way to do it is to make the pilgrimage and sit down face-to-face and have some tea.”

“I'm primarily interested in examining human issues.”

“I think a lot of action films, and I'm just saying this as a moviegoer, the default setting on action films seems to be how could it be cooler?”

“You know, when you make something in live-action, you make it real. And when you are inspired by and determined to honor the original - the most original version of the 'Mulan' story - then you have to acknowledge that this is a story about a young woman who disguises herself as a man and goes to war.”

“I do commit really, really passionately. It's why I only work every five years. It's exhausting.”

“In all cases, I will always hire the best person for the job, and it just so happens that many of those are women.”

“I blew up the mine in 'North Country'. It was about a kilometer long. I was so nervous that I'd do it wrong that I closed my eyes when I did it and I missed the shot completely.”

“There's so many movies, they're just like fast food you consume them and you can't even remember what you just ate. I don't want to make those kinds of movies. I want to make the slow food of movies.”