For me, it is always important to make a film that has a strong personal connection, whether that is a family story or a social observation. Characters and scenes are often heavily based on ideas taken from my sketchbooks, trying to keep some of the immediacy and spontaneity of drawings from life and quick sketches.

My graduation film Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a manifestation of my own personal feelings about what it is to be British, and the uncomfortable mixture of pride and shame in its history and current politics.