I mean, putting women in the center of a movie and not talking about men, that's already political, right? And you know, political doesn't mean that it sends this message or that is has a statement. It's also political in its aesthetic project.
People keep telling me, "You don't like boys!" And I'm saying, "Wow, no, it's just that you're not used to them being objectified in movies, but women are so often objectified in movies and we don't care."
I think all movies are political. The ones that are not political intentionally are the worst, and have the worst politics, I think.
The movie not only about what story you're telling and who you're looking at. It's mostly about how you're telling it and how you're looking at it. And people who don't like it, who say, "Oh, it's not 'true' because you're looking at it in a stylized way" - it's a movie and it's fiction, so it's also a lot in the artistic direction that it is political.
I want to try different genres. I think I'll still be looking at a strong female character in the center, and identity struggle and transformation.
I intentionally leave adults out in my stories, not to say that they're not in charge or that they don't care, or that they're failing at what they do. Not at all. It's two things: It's a way to be true to what adolescence feels like, because, okay, your parents may be around, but you still don't want them to be around. What you go through, you go through alone, I think.
Obviously, I can't tell the story of what it is to be a black girl, but maybe I can tell something else. Girlhood is not about what it's like to be a black girl, it's about what it's like to be a girl.
I think I like about coming-of-age stories is that there's everything in them. It's a genre that kind of contains everything: you have the chronicle, you can go into naturalism, but it's also about transforming physically, so it's kind of a fantastical genre.
I like the idea of a trilogy. It's cool. I like the word. When you do four, the word isn't cool - not as cool.
I like to work around identification for the audience, and when there's a grown-up or a moral figure or something like that, people tend to go there.
Being in a group is a way to actually to speak up, and define yourself in the comfort, and the complexity of the group.
I was a lot younger - when I wrote Water Lilies. I was like 26. It felt so natural to write about adolescence.
