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I'm someone who has a singular goal in making films: I want to tell a story. There are certain stories that I want to tell.

I got into filmmaking in order to tell very personal stories, and in this day and age, the opportunity seems all the more precious.

At least I want to be making films that are somehow born out of me that are stories I want to tell. The challenge is figuring out how to do it where you can make them personal, yet still deliver to an audience a film experience that is satisfying and emotional, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I really want to do film, but I want to do the right film. The truth for me is that I'm really driven by stories. So there are stories I want to tell, and if it's a good story then I want to do it, whatever genre it is.

I want to continue to make beautiful movies. The most important thing is to be a part of beautiful stories, that's all I want. So I don't care if it's a Hollywood movie or an independent movie or a Spanish or American movie. I care about telling stories.

If you want to tell stories, be a writer, not a filmmaker.

Hollywood's never really been the ultimate goal for me.

You grow up loving movies, and your first instinct is you want to be an actor, because those are the people you see in the movies. But when you actually become an actor, you're like, 'Oh, wait, this is actually only a small portion of the storytelling. If I want to really tell a story, I'd want to be a director.'

Everyone has different goals. For myself, I would rather take less roles and be working on films that I'm passionate about, that are going to challenge me, and that I'm going to be growing from. I don't ever want to take a movie just for the sake of working.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.