Set against the backdrop of the chaos and civil war that enveloped 1990s Sierra Leone, 'Blood Diamond' is the story of Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ex-mercinary from Zimbabwe, and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories and their circumstances are as different as any can be until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond, the kind of stone that can transform a life..or end it.First's Liz Frost caught up with Leonardo DiCaprio Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Paula Weinstein, Martyn Palmer, and Edward Zwick at Claridges hotel in London, to talk about the making of the controversial and hard hitting blockbuster..

They say that visiting Africa, let alone working there changes a person. I just wondered what the experience of making this film did for you guys
Edward Zwick Well, I mean I had visited Africa several times as a tourist but the experience of being there on and off for a year and in a place for six months was very confrontive[sic]. I think it can’t help but be. The thing about Mozambique particularly but other places where we found ourselves, is that everything is lived in front of you. It’s all on the street. You know, here where we don’t really see children because they’re tucked away or old people, there it’s in your face. Its disease and death, its sexuality and spirituality. It’s the three-year-old taking care of the one-year-old and everything is there and inescapable, and I think after a certain amount of time that finds it’s way into your consciousness and inevitably I think onto the film itself and I think none of us were unmoved.

Leonardo DiCaprio Sure, you know I’d have to definitely agree with that statement. You know, growing up in the Western world and seeing some of the things we saw, not to mention the natural beauty of Africa, but to see the conditions and the way that people live there every day and how they’ve somehow maintained to have such an amazingly positive attitude and outlook on life was pretty inspiring for all of us, and it makes you come back home and question what any of us have to complain about. You know, to talk about ways that we were moved, I’m sure we all have our own private stories and feelings on the subject matter, but to put it very bluntly, it was the spirit of the people that was the most astounding and moving for me as a person to witness. I mean we shot in areas of Mozambique where you know four out of ten people had the HIV virus. There was poverty everywhere. There wasn’t enough clean water, yet they maintain an attitude about just being alive that was pretty astounding and you know it continues to be a place that deserves the Western world to support as much as humanly possible. So that’s what I have to say.

Jennifer Connelly It was..I thought it was a huge privilege to be able to spend that much time in South Africa and Mozambique and I was also fortunate enough to travel to Botswana with my family, who was over with me, and I think it was..I mean it was so extraordinary. It was all those things that everyone is saying, so extraordinarily beautiful and enriching and the most I think I was changed by was it was really difficult to try to figure out what to do with one’s own privilege every day. Living with that. It’s easier to kind of tuck that away and here you know, but it’s very difficult to do that, spending that much time in a place like Maputo, so it really made me think about my own privilege and the film also in general, things that how we spread our wealth and how we..the responsibility that comes with it.

Djimon, for you it was returning to your home continent to work. What was that like
Djimon Hounsou It was amazing. You know, anytime you go back to Africa, whether you’ve been to Africa before, going there for the first time, it’s always sort of a love story and again going back and shooting, making the film in South Africa, which is a place that I think out of the whole of Africa, I think it’s quite a special place and Mozambique and the livelihood of the people that helped us create the right environment for this film were just unbelievable, so..but you know I go back regularly, so there’s no surprises.

Paula Weinstein Well this was my second time making a film in Africa and the first time was in the 80’s in Zimbabwe and going illegally really into South Africa, and to go back to South Africa was fantastic now, to see the post apartheid era and to really get to know the people and see the struggles they’re going through for reconciliation, which is still going on there, and you know people say Africa, and they think of it as this monolith. The difference between Zimbabwe and South Africa and then Mozambique was really strong to me, the different colonial powers there and the residual problems and culture that had been left. What struck me the most in Mozambique was how desperately everybody would embrace us and embrace any economic help they could have, because there were people everywhere you turned on the street, there were people who were selling jewelry that they’d made and they were an enormously entrepreneurial people and you just sit there and think, My God, with aid, with businesses going, with real help these are people who want to do well and who are taking care of their families, and who have a very optimistic view and are great workers and every cliché is completely wrong, and I was inspired just watching them survive in their daily life and with great enthusiasm and optimism.

Leonardo, have you every bought diamonds for anybody and did you check their origin? And also for Jennifer, will you be wearing diamonds to the Oscar ceremonies
Leonardo Sure, I’ve bought diamonds in the past. You know, before taking on another spot..learning about basically conflict diamonds and their devastating impact on places like Sierra Leone I basically knew the tag line of what a conflict stone was or the term blood diamond. I was pretty much unfamiliar with the ramifications of some of the events that have gone on and how, and I do say devastating impact that it has had in countries in Africa. Millions of people in this place, millions of lives lost, you know if you see the movie you obviously see that there’s some pretty horrific events and you know, by the way I would like to mention none of it is glorified or exaggerated by any means, but would I ever buy a diamond again? If I ever did buy a diamond again, I would make sure it’s a conflict free diamond and I would get it certified by the dealer that I bought it from that’s for, that’s for damn sure. You know, yes I have bought them in the past.

Jennifer I have since making the film and becoming more informed about conflict diamonds, I have worn diamonds because I feel that a boycott is not necessarily the answer, it doesn’t solve the problem because there are human rights implications to that as well. There are potential positive benefits that could come out of the wealth that diamond mining can bring to these countries, even if as of the moment the economic beneficiation [sic] isn’t quite as equitable as hopefully it can be in the future, but on the subject of conflict diamonds, I certainly..the diamonds that I have worn since becoming a little more educated have been, come with certificates guaranteeing that they’re conflict free and I would ensure that any diamonds I would wear in the future would be certified.

Edward Yeah, I’ve just heard about this initiative that’s been proposed that first began at the Golden Globes and they’re intending to have at the Oscars, which is this raise your right hand campaign in which they’ve offered a charitable contribution of $10,000 to any actor or actress who would wear bling and the just cruel irony that is I’m sure unconscious in that the raising of one’s hand and the using of one’s hand to vote was the prompt for the Revolutionary United Front to chop off hands in Sierra Leone and it’s either some colossal cluelessness or remarkable indifference to that reality that would somehow try to equate raising one’s hand with a diamond on it as a promotional counter measure to the effect of the film, and my grandfather always told me that charity of course was always best done in private, and this notion of a charitable contribution as a blandishment to wear diamonds is the creation of a new trope I think in our culture. I think it’s the charitable bribe. I find that rather distasteful, I have to say.

Following a similar theme, I just wondered whether any of what you witnessed out there, the poverty is something that’s inspired any of you to become activists, to become involved in charities or to find out ways in which you could help the people out there
Leonardo I have since, yes. You know, I worked with SOS, Save Our Souls, the orphanage out there in Mozambique, contributed to that organisation and I think we’re all continuing to work with organisations like Amnesty International and Global Witness, certainly to get the message out there about conflict diamonds. Jennifer I know has a long history and Djimon as well of work in Africa.

Jennifer I’ve been working with Amnesty International for a few years now, more on human rights education in the United States, sort of that’s how I started working with them, the spokesperson for them, trying to encourage programmes and support programmes, human rights education programmes in elementary schools and public schools in the United States. And so that’s the majority of my work with them, it’s been on that. And I also like Leo, and I believe Djimon, while we were in Maputo on most of my days off I was going to an orphanage there and working there, and I’ve tried to keep the line of communication open with some of the kids that I developed relationships with. It’s been a bit tricky.

Djimon I’ve been involved with the Oxfam for some time now, the One Campaign as well and SOS Germany in Mozambique.

Martin Palmer It’s a matter of public record now, although we began it in private that everyone there could not help but be moved by some of the places in which we worked. We were in many villages and neighbourhoods, and we all just decided together to put together a certain amount of money that was then matched by the studio to do things for the various people who had been very gracious and generous to us in their villages. You know, a movie company has a number of resources at it’s disposal, and we were able to build classrooms and fix roads and dig wells, and I think above all really, and this is something that Jennifer alluded to in terms of the industry of the people, a film company comes to a place and it brings $30 or $40 million of cash into it’s local economy, and it’s not like a loan from the International Monetary Fund to build a bridge where money gets siphoned off into you know bad governance. Rather this money goes right like a shot in the arm into the local economy, where a driver gives it to his wife who gives it to the butcher and so on, through the economy, and that was probably the best thing we did, was just to actually do the movie there.

Paula I just wanted to say also about your Oscar point, back one second. The diamond industry has set up a plan for the Oscars, to make sure that the movie stars wear diamonds, in fact are drowning in diamonds and when asked why they don’t suggest that they have conflict diamonds, so that as the women go down the red carpet they can talk about conflict diamonds and in fact continue to support legitimate diamond workers and help them, the answer was no. So I think there has been a concerted campaign, rather than taking on the movie in the best way, which is to say we are now having conflict free diamonds, and we agree with the Kimberley process, there’s been a desire to circumvent that and not support the work that the movie talks about, and frankly I find it rather surprising.

Edward It has to be said of course that Hollywood has been very complicit in the mythology of diamonds and the celebration of them for many, many years and this tradition of giving these diamonds to actors and actresses for the awards is about 75 years old.

Paula And in movies.

Edward Yeah, and in movies.

Congratulations on a fantastic movie. Congratulations on an authentic accent, Leonardo but Djimon, I wonder given your background and given your upbringing, what or was there any element of your upbringing that you drew upon for the role, or was that purely acting
Djimon Well you know I always like to think that when we are acting or certainly when we are portraying a character, it has nothing to do with our personal life. Because that would be a road too limited, too limiting in terms of having resources and trying to find ways to dig into the emotional countenance of that particular character, so I’m not..apart from the fact that I am from Africa and you know, I don’t know to be honest.

Leonardo You know as an outsider, you know I have to say there was a certain element to him that I think being an African man and having come to America, and coming back to Africa to shoot a movie about this subject matter, there was a certain pathos that I think he naturally embodied, a certain instinct and a passion that I certainly felt from him as another actor. That is not to say of course that the man didn’t do a tremendous amount of work in even learning the Menday [?] accent and transforming himself, but there was an inner instinct there that I felt certainly every day, working alongside him that was very carnal you know and deep rooted, if those are the words I can use to describe it, and it came from the gut, and I think it shows up on screen.

Djimon I must say, thank you buddy. I must say that obviously I’ve been touched and somewhat hurt to see Africa go through what it has gone through for so long, so many holocausts, so many genocides and so on, so forth so when I first heard about the story, I was extremely..I was literally begging for the role, so when it all came together, I just couldn’t wait. Everything was just pouring out of me so in a way I guess maybe the fact that I’m originally from Africa probably may have something to do with it.

In terms of Danny’s accent, Leonardo, I wonder how significant it was to get into the character that created I suppose a demarcation between you and him in the first instance, how much research you had to do and did you keep it up all through the shoot
Leonardo Well you know, it was a completely foreign and alien sound to me, just the South African sound and having not spent a lot of time in Africa, it was not only important to go there early, to lock down the accent as best I could, but just to get the general attitudes of some of these mercenaries, some of these soldiers of fortune, some of these men that have fought wars in Angola, some of the people that have seen some of the atrocities that go on, to try to capture their bitterness or their mixed emotions towards the continent that they’re from, so I definitely wanted to go there as early as possible, and I think that certainly spending time with a lot of these guys that I got to spend time with, absolutely fundamentally shaped everything about the character for me, was literally their stories that I sort of tried to embrace and take on as my own for Danny, and did I stay in..I don’t remember to tell you the truth. I think I tried my best, but when you go order food at catering, sometimes you forget I guess.

Leonardo, we’re a couple of hours away from the Oscar nominations and I don’t want to speak too soon but you’ve had a couple of nominations for the Oscars in the past. Can I just ask you what an Oscar nomination means to you? What sort of impact does it have on you when you hear that news
Leonardo Sarcasm doesn’t translate in times like this. No, but honestly, I mean it’s a pat answer but it is the truth. It is the truth. It’s a nice thing to be recognised like that. It really is. I mean, truly to put a lot of hard work and effort into a project or a character like this and then for it to be recognised. How can it not be? How can it not be nice? It’s certainly not something that I expect by any means, or that we strive for during the pre-production process, or even the filming process. It’s one of those things that the more I’ve sort of acted, I’ve realised I have absolutely A) no control of and B) no way of really quite understanding how people will react to anything that I do, or any movie I do. If every actor, every studio had that magic formula, we’d all be making you know critically acclaimed multibillion dollar hits every time we do a movie. There are so many intangible forces that come into play when making a film. I honestly have no idea what the public will ultimately think of something that I do, let alone critics you know. It’s something that I think continues to mystify all of us.

Edward and Paula, the film accuses Western companies for trafficking these diamonds of war and very rightly so, but did you encounter any difficulties when making the film, and also if there were any difficulties, did this have an impact on the timing that the film was made
Edward Yeah well, the process by which a film comes to be is unfortunately long. We began this process, I mean I think Paula first began this process, it must have been at least five years ago and my involvement with it has been about two and a half years and the gestation just happens to be as long as it takes. The truth is we received only encouragement from the studio and remarkable support. There was clearly an indication early on that some in the diamond industry, whose job it has always been to promote the image of diamonds and the mythology of diamonds would not be pleased by what we were doing, and to that end they’ve spent many, many millions of dollars on a corporate image campaign, but nothing amounting to pressure. I think one of the great virtues still of Hollywood as an independent industry is that it remains often immune to that kind of outside pressure, whether through private industry or government, and to that end we made the film we wanted to make. Paula?

Paula Warner had had a pre-existing project that was really not at all political and not terribly good and they came to us and said, Would you make this, change it and contemporise it? And we did and we put it in Sierra Leone and they were prepared to go as far as Ed wanted to in terms of the politics of the script and really from the beginning were supportive of it, but in terms of it’s timing, this isn’t a film simply and I don’t mean to dismiss it, about Sierra Leone. It’s about what happens with the west and third world countries. How do major corporations exploit the natural resources of other countries. So it’s timing, yes it’s late in terms of Sierra Leone but it is extremely I believe contemporary and will sadly be for at least the immediate future in terms of how we as westerners and how certainly our multinational corporations begin to look at the natural resources of other countries, and Warner was great from the beginning.

It’s obviously been meticulously researched and beautifully performed by the three of you, but people seem to be quite upset that the film doesn’t resemble Sierra Leone in any way, that the landscape is very much not Sierra Leonian, and not even West African, and I wondered, given what you’ve talked about, given the economic benefits of filming in these countries and the shot in the arm to Mozambique for example, whether it would have been possible to film more of it in Sierra Leone and actually give those benefits directly back to the Sierra Leonians
Edward Right, well first of all I’m curious about only one thing in that we did do a considerable amount of exterior location work in Sierra Leone also at the end, so many of those exteriors are indeed Sierra Leone and many of the hills and such that you see in the background were then digitally taken from the Sierra Leonian hills and then put into the film, so as to attempt as best we could to capture that landscape. That being said, Sierra Leone is slowly making it’s way back from the most devastating circumstance, and you know having been there that there is often no power in Freetown, that the sanitation, that the schools aren’t working, that the roads are in terrible condition. There’s very little infrastructure and the size of this production in terms of it’s action, the transportation in and out as you know to get from the airport and all such things and flights made it impossible to work there. We would have liked nothing more to have been able to do that, but it just was deemed as something that was just unfeasible.

Leonardo, Jennifer and Djimon, perhaps one of the most involving parts of the film is how well your characters interact with one another and the relationship you share. I wonder, does location film making aid that in that you are in such close quarters together for the principle photography?

Jennifer I think filming on location really lends a lot to a film and I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. It’s the light, it’s the weather, it’s the heat, something about it if we did it on a back lot, it would have felt..you know, you can see it. You can see it in the quality of light. It feels a little stilted and there’s something about, I think it lends an atmosphere to the scenes that really, I mean one can strive to overcome and bring to a scene, but wow it’s really a gift when it’s already there for you to use, so that was really wonderful. In terms of it for me affecting how I worked with Leo and Djimon, I don’t think that when working with really talented actors, you need tricks like that to create personal in my opinion histories because for me in the first scenes that we did together, it was so easy and wonderful working with both of them, because they’re both really talented actors and both of them are..you get lots of different kinds of actors. Both of them are actors who are very much present in the scene and very collaborative, and supportive and generous of actors that they’re working with and actually listen, which believe it or not doesn’t always happen. I mean there are always those people who you work with and you know you could strip off all your clothes and dance up and down, and they’d still do the same thing. And that certainly was far from the case with both Leonardo and Djimon, so it’s a long winded way of saying I think just having met, it was really wonderful, but it was such a privilege to have spent time in those locations.

Leonardo Why thank you Jennifer. But just to add a small point to that, I agree with everything she said, specifically about me, but no there is a certain element of camaraderie I think that exists there when you’re on location and you’re forced to be in each other’s space constantly, the film takes centre focus with everyone, and when you don’t go back home to your comfortable lifestyle and your daily ritual of where you live, certainly in a place like Africa, you know, not just the environment but the political landscape, it was surrounding us all the time and the issues were there. We could draw upon stories from other people and I felt like we were constantly you know sharing information about the place that we were filming in and I think it affected all of our characters and it affected our relationships with each other as characters too.

Djimon For me personally I found it extremely challenging working on location, especially a location like Africa for such a long time and it’s challenging for two reasons. You can either get extremely lucky to have a great team and a great costars with you, or it can turn out to be extremely ugly, but it’s been my experience that you know, and on this one certainly we were very lucky to have Leonardo and Jennifer and the rapport was brilliant.

I read in the press that the Antwerp World Diamond Centre has invited Mr. DiCaprio to come and see how it’s working in there. My first question, do you intend to go there if they were asking you personally? And secondly I was wondering if fighting blood diamonds has become one of your causes, or will you stop talking about it after the promotion of this movie?

Leonardo Well, you know I’m open to hearing every side of the story, but I have not accepted that offer no. I don’t know if I will. Ultimately will I stop talking about conflict diamonds you know, no I’m not going to stop talking about conflict diamonds and that issue, but of course it depends on when and where I’m asked. You know, traditionally I think we’ve attached ourselves to certain causes and mine has traditionally been or has been environmental issues and I’m going to continue to work on that, but by no means does that not mean that I’m going to not continue spreading the word whenever I can on the issue.

Paula. I wonder of all the logistical problems you faced on this, which one was the greatest and also whether even shooting in Africa and having three major Hollywood stars caused the odd caffufle

Paula Well, I can answer this as well. We had a man named Kevin Delenoit, who was the line producer and as brilliant a tactician one could never meet. Is that the right way of saying it? I think the moves were the most complicated in terms of moving that big a production and then we were very lucky in finding one location in South Africa where Ed could shoot so many scenes. The Benjamin Village and the mines and the big action sequences, everything took place there except for the fall of Freetown, and what would you say was the hardest? I think landing those locations and moving that many people from place to place.

Edward Yeah, I mean there’s an absence of roads and things but you know there’s, I’ve deduced now from the number of questions people have asked me over time about the difficulties of filming in Africa, I think it may behoove us to talk about the advantages, because you know making a film is difficult everywhere, but there is a cynicism and a kind of jaundiced quality that one often finds making a film in places that have had too much filming and we having again brought this economic boon to places were welcomed and embraced, not to mention the fact that things being so pristine, you get to avoid the entropy of life, which is to say traffic and planes and paparazzi and all sorts of things that have come to inhibit your process, not to mention the extraordinary commitment and generosity of unbelievably hard working, ambitious and capable people who don’t as often get the opportunity to work on a film of this scale, and I mean the crews who were magnificent, I mean the extras, who gave of themselves utterly and that was up and down the line, the opportunity of taking advantage of these people was really extraordinary, and I think as far as the pluses or minuses went, it actually was all to the benefit of the film.

Paula Great cooperation from both governments. Extraordinary help and as Ed said, the crew was just fantastic, everywhere we went. Excited about making a movie, excited about learning a new craft.

Mr. Zwick, in the film Maddy is very scornful is about the amount of coverage the Sierra Leone gets in the press as opposed to Monica Lewinski and I was wondering what was your opinion on the state of the news

Edward Well you know, the man who worked very closely with us was a wonderful documentary film maker named Soria Samora [?] whom I believe won, forgive me I don’t remember the name of the award, it was a British journalist of the year award here, based on his documentary Cry Freetown, and his story is a remarkable one. First he took a lot of film of what was happening in Sierra Leone on a very low resolution camera and brought it to I believe it was Reuters, although don’t quote me on this, I’d have to ask him and they refused it initially because it was below broadcast quality transmission, so he got himself smuggled out, came here, worked day and night for weeks in hourly wages jobs so as to be able to go back to Sierra Leone with a better camera and do it all again at the risk of his life and limb, and finally get that story out. And the reason I evoke that is to suggest how little coverage there was of what was happening in that place at that time, and you know I think what I see in the coverage in Europe is much better than what I see in the United States, but I find all of it woefully little proportionate to the epic scale of the events that were taking place and continue to.

Edward, I just wondered how hard a search it was to find the young lad to play Dia and also was Arnold Vosloo any particular help for things on the military side, because wasn’t he in the army originally before he became an actor

Edward He wasn’t no. Arnold is a spectacular collaborator and a very nice guy and I know he was a help to Leo at times. The tribute to Leo’s accent I believe is that he was surrounded by South African actors who were the real thing, and it’s one thing to do it among a whole group who are making it up, but to put yourself at that level is the real litmus, I felt. Kagiso Kuipers [?] is a boy from Johannesburg who had found his way to a school of music and art. He’d been really a dancer and a very talented one. The process of working with young actors is something that I have always enjoyed. The search for them is grueling in that it just takes time with each child to see what internally is going on. I had the good fortune of first working with Claire Daines [?] when she was thirteen and working with Evan Rachel-Wood [?] when she was the same age. The irony is that both Jenny and Leo were both child actors themselves and I suspect when they were that same age you know it when you see it. What you know you can’t teach. It’s like being kissed by a certain angel and when I met Kagiso and worked with him, it was very clear the reservoirs of feeling and the availability of emotion that he had and the person who I would also credit deeply in this process would be Djimon, who really devoted himself to Kagiso and to that relationship from the beginning, to make him feel comfortable and to, in the quietest, most gentle way instruct him in this process, and so as to create the bond which then pays off obviously in the movie.

Leonardo, it can’t have been easy for such a well known face as yourself to gain the confidence of the South African mercenaries and soldiers that you refer to earlier. Could you tell us a bit more about how you managed to infiltrate that very specific milieu? Was it a case of getting drunk with them a bit and down and dirty with them

Leonardo You hit the nail on the head, yeah. No but you know initially going there, there is a hardened shell that surrounds a lot of these guys and to, and you know I was pretty surprised you know, coming from America where I think I incorporated a line you Americans love to talk about your feelings, from my experiences hanging out with some of these South African okes because it was very hard for them to divulge anything about their attitudes about you know Africa or their mixed emotions about the politics there, or their experiences at war or what it was like for them or what they were really feeling, so you know it did take a certain amount of taking them out to various bars and getting them drunk and you know rehashing sort of past demons, and that was some of the most beneficial stuff for me. I think that you know it helped shape my character, or made me understand you know some of the emotional turmoil that my character had gone through.

Was it an undercover operation at times, because of your fame

Leonardo In what way? Did I go out in a disguise?

Were you smuggled in or anything like that

Leonardo Smuggled into a bar? No I just kinda walked in.

Psychologists say that comedy or humour is one way of dealing with tragedy or grief. I just wondered, was there any high jinx or was there any moments that made you in the film, Leonardo, Jennifer and Djimon

Leonardo I love the build up to that. I mean, it was a very sophisticated way of asking, if any funny things happen on set? Can I be very honest, I can’t remember a damn thing as far as..

Djimon I must say the only thing that was funny I think between Leo and myself is that for three quarters of the shooting we’re pretty much standing and walking and running in the bushes and so the daily routine was daydreaming about being in Paris, with a nice hot chocolate and croissants.

Leonardo Strolling the Champs Elysee.

Djimon Yeah.

Jennifer I can’t remember anything particularly funny, any high jinx but I had a monkey story. That wasn’t at work but be had baboons in our room which was kind of fabulous but they raided the mini bar, literally they did. They ate candy bars. We came back, they were bouncing on the bed, we had little footprints on the couch, but Leo and I had to do the scene where we’re dancing. That was horrific because we’re sort of dancing but have a lot of dialogue, clearly there can’t be any music, so there are lots of people there and the whole crew, you kind of get this feeling that everyone is like, All right, let’s see what these two got. And you’re kind of, No really, we’re not really hardly going to dance. We’re just going to kinda sway a little because it’s really embarrassing. They take the music out, so you’re left kinda trying to pull something together.

Edward. Your films are very political films, like the Siege, that deal with injustices instigated by the powers that be. Is it your intention to keep making films that go at the establishment and try to create a new look at the world

Edward It’s not as if I set out each time to say what injustice can I now take on. I’m looking for stories that engage me. I think obviously I have a certain sensibility that is inclined toward seeing what is true in the world and how lives can be described in the context of those stories. You know, I think making films is a privilege and there is at times some responsibility that goes along with telling stories that are based in truth, so I think when that opportunity presents itself, it’s a thrilling thing. It’s not all that interests me and I’ve done a lot of other films that in fact are more I guess just classically about entertaining, although I think that the best films finally have in them somewhere in their core something political, and it could be a certain politics of emotion or a certain dynamic about a group. There are any number of ways that one can express one’s politics. It doesn’t have to be explicitly in the situation that’s as charged as this one, so the answer is whatever I try to do inevitably I suspect that it’ll find some way to have who I am bleed into its fabric.