Sarah Gavron

“Just going to Bangladesh was an experience... if you go into small villages in the U.K., they're backward and culturally devoid. But if you go into small villages in Bangladesh, they have classical music concerts.”

“I would love to see more diversity on all sides, and not just in terms of women; we need people from different walks of life making films.”

“We need to have more conversations about representation as well as the imbalance in terms of needing more women behind the camera and in front of the camera, and the diversity factor.”

“Remember to use your vote. Remember to speak out and feel empowered.”

“It's well proven that if you have equality in society, society flourishes, and if you have inequality, it doesn't. So it's good for everybody.”

“The late Victorian Era brought in part-time education. Not everybody went to school, but they were supposed to have a decent level of schooling; they went part-time after 12.”

“It has to be 'The Piano' by Jane Campion. It inspired me to pursue my dream to direct. It is not just my favorite woman-directed film - it is my favorite film.”

“I think it's easy to hold on to this romantic hope that communities such as Niaqornat won't change, because we're in this world where progress is unstoppable, and they're a link to some idealised past.”

“My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.”

“I suppose 'This Little Life' and 'Brick Lane' both have things in common in that they have a female protagonist very much at the centre of the story, and they're subjectively told.”

“I'm so aware how often women's bodies are objectified on film.”

“The suffragettes realized the power of getting arrested and going to prison and harassing politicians and making a nuisance of themselves. It got them a lot of attention. What they never did was set out to endanger human life except for sacrificing themselves.”

“In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.”

“It was only when I saw films in my early 20s by Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Sally Potter and Kathryn Bigelow, I started to think, 'Oh, it's possible.' I dared to suggest that I wanted to train to be a film director.”

“I had a mother who got involved in grassroot politics when I was growing up. I watched her have agency and become political in a very male-dominated world.”

“With 'Suffragette,' I was emboldened that there were so many women around me. We had a female writer, producers, production and costume designers.”

“It's interesting when you read the debates in parliaments between MPs about whether they should give women a vote. It's a lot of fear; it is fear of change. It's fear if women get to vote, family structures will break down. Women will stop having children. Women won't vote for war.”

“'Suffragette' is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fight for the right to vote.”

“Niaqornat particularly seemed to offer a heightened version of a story being played out across the world about traditional communities' struggle for survival and their attempts to renegotiate their identity in the face of modern life.”

“Film is a machine: you never stop.”