"The idea of making a film - a film that I had certainly never seen before - about the slave experience was a huge responsibility. It's a project that requires a wider understanding of the geopolitical nature of the slave trade, of historical and modern-day racism."

"If you're looking at people like Patrice Lumumba, you are looking at people who had a very definite plan, and events overran them."

"This is going to sound completely absurd, but I do sometimes feel like the enjoyment of an awards ceremony or the pride in the finished article hasn't ever surpassed the joy of doing the work, of making it. The doing it is really the bit I'm there for."

"We always want to live in an environment where there's no artificial block to good work."

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."

"In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know."

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

"Yeah, I don't deal with current events or pop culture, and I avoid politics like the plague."