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I'm not one of those people who sees documentaries as a stepping stone to doing fiction. I love documentaries and watch tons of documentaries. But, I like fiction films a lot, too.

The documentaries I made were never normal documentaries. They were about subjects I was obsessed with, and I suppose I thought I could sculpt them. What I think I do with my fiction is the same.

So I do tend to do documentaries where I can move in and out of them.

I've been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.

The luxury that I have is I'm not career-minded, I just live from one film to the next. For a time, I was making documentaries, and all my documentaries were winning awards and stuff, and then I lost interest in documentaries.

Documentaries for me always felt kind of limiting. I wanted to go bigger. And I also love actors, and I love performance. So feature filmmaking was always the intent.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.