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" In a lot of my films, the biggest theme is family, making families out of those around you. "

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" Coming from a very small country, it's always nice to see our own doing well. "

" Actors are terrible at overthinking things before they turn up to work, and they decide on a way they're going to do it, and then it's hard to break them out of it. "

" You can have integrity with your art, but worrying about integrity doesn't pay the bills. "

" A lot of people are trying to get out of their home country and think 'making it' is if you're able to work in another. For me... I'd be quite content to keep doing my own little films down there for the rest of my filmmaking career. "

" I really didn't want to be boxed into becoming a certain kind of film-maker - becoming the Maori story film-maker because I had made those short films. "

" You make up a character, there's always gonna be parts of you that, like it or not, shine through. "

" You have to let go of the control and allow things to develop. You need to have a flexible attitude, especially working with kids. "

" That's what attracts me to the kind of characters I try and write - that they're not cut and dried. "

" Kids are always very savvy. It doesn't take long for a kid to realize when an adult is a loser. "

" I've always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template. "

" To me, spending millions of dollars recreating the world's sadness with actors and props and sets - it seems like a kind of arrogant waste of money... Unless, that is, it's a film about an historical event. "

" There's nothing cooler than going to work and hanging around with your friends and laughing, because it's something that you get told off for throughout your entire time at school... it's just like a big 'in your face' to those bully teachers that you had when you were a kid. "

" I really like arcade games and like the '80s and early '90s kind of games, just because there's a real kind of naivete to them, but there's like a real inventiveness to it as well. "

" My job is to express myself. "

" My style of working is I'll often be behind the camera, or right next to the camera yelling words at people, like, 'Say this, say this! Say it this way!' I'll straight-up give Anthony Hopkins a line reading. I don't care. "

" In my films, a lot of the situations come from real life. "

" New Zealand was kind of getting a reputation for making middle-of-the-road films that weren't really that unique. They were kind of New Zealand versions of overseas films, and for sure, having an Oscar nomination totally helped me get funding. "

" I've always said that, first and foremost, I make films for New Zealanders. They're my target audience. Then after that, if people appreciate my stories from outside this country, then that's an added bonus. "

" Indigenous people in films, it's all, like, nose flutes and panpipes and, you know, people talking to ghosts... which I hate. "

Indigenous People

" I come from a country whose idea of masculinity is quite extreme, and I've grown up around a lot of that energy. I've been part of that a lot. And it's very draining; it's quite tiring trying to be macho. "

" I think something that every actor wants, whether they've done four movies or forty movies, is they want to find the work interesting. You want to come to work and think this is going to be a challenge. "

" I'd loved 'Iron Man,' you know, with a passion. I thought that was the most fresh, cool thing, in terms of superhero movies, that I'd seen in a long time. "

" As kids, we all thought Bob Marley was Maori. "

" Characters I create are just mixtures of the people I know. "

" I daydream all the time. "

" You realise that there's nothing more endearing than people who are desperately trying to be liked or trying to be the hero, you know? Who also probably just need a hug or want to impress their dad? "

" I was depressed about the roles that were on offer, so I had to make my own stories. "

" Most of my films - if you look at the tone, apart from 'Shadows,' which is straight-up comedy - the tone is a mix between comedy and pathos, and I really love that. "

" I love heroes that really go through ordeals, and they come out the other end completely changed. "

" I don't mind going from sadness to comedy in a split-second or mixing the two up. "