SEBASTIAN LELIO

This idea of walls, segregation, labels, and 'You against us' and 'We are superior and you are inferior.' Which people are legitimate? Which relationships are legitimate or not? Who declares that under which authority? These are things that are hugely important.

Chilean society is conservative, but U.S. society is puritanical.

When you're filming, not everything is rational.

Cinema is empathy machinery, and we multiply our life experience through cinema. When it is good cinema, it almost counts as a personal experience.

To me, there was something moving about the idea of telling the story of a lady who is, in a way, a forgotten character - someone who would normally be a secondary role in a movie.

Creative processes are always very opaque. Afterwards, you tend to pretend that everything was planned and it was a strategy, but it was not like that at all.

Rachel Weisz is amazing, instinctive, volcanic - an amazing force of nature.

'Gloria' is a film about a fifty eight-year-old woman who is quite alone in life; however, she is quite optimistic. Nobody has much time for her, and so she regularly goes to these single adults' parties where she is looking for someone. By the end of the film, she doesn't necessarily find love, but she does find something else.

I went to church as a boy, and then I quite quickly stepped away from religion. But I remained fascinated by the need people have for religion.

I'm not saying transgender characters should be only interpreted by transgender actors - because that would be as rigid as saying transgender actors cannot play cisgender roles, and that's not the idea.

There's something about using the cinematic device as a tool to connect with dimensions of the world that you don't know too well, you're not too familiar with. It's like a creating a bridge, or a spaceship to travel to the unknown.

I grew up in a dictatorship in a very Catholic country.

I have never been religious, but I've seen the strength of it.

Every human society has its lights and its shadows. That's the reality of existence.

The mystery of film is not in the script. It's in the shooting, in the interacting of humans and space and time.

I knew 'Transparent' and saw a few episodes of 'Orange is the New Black,' so I knew about the trans actor in that cast. Of course, I saw 'Boys Don't Cry' back in the day. But the path that led me to this subject was different... it's just my curiosity as a human being more than my awareness of any political struggles.

English is not my language.

I learned at an early age to be socially effective while practicing disappearing.

I've been following my intuition and what moves me.

I had the idea that I'm going to make a trans-genre film about a transgender woman.

My stepfather was in the navy, so I got to know a side of Chile that is not what you would expect from an artist.

We all face crossroads in our lives where we can retreat into ourselves, or we can hit the dance floor.

I don't come from a rich family, but my parents are professionals.

I'm very open to following the stories that move me and reach that flexibility where you can be more flexible. I'm expanding my horizons.

When you're filming, you're blind. But if you follow what really moves you, then you operate from a place of hope: maybe that the story you're telling will resonate with whatever the world will have become when the film is ready to be born.