The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones, and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them.
The rule I have when choosing films is the excitement factor, I need to feel excited about the story and whatever message the film has - only then do I sign on the dotted line.
When the storyteller tells the truth, she reminds us that human beings are more alike than unalike... A story is what it's like to be a human being-to be knocked down and to miraculously arise. Each one of us has arisen, awakened. We do rise.
And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
I'm the only Mauritanian filmmaker so it wouldn't make sense to make a film in France. I could shoot outside of my own country if the story was something that called for it. Africa really has to be the reason for me to make a new film.
Being an African filmmaker, Africa is what's important for me. If I were to shot a film in France or elsewhere it would only be because the story that was being told was something that concerned me, and that really called me or needed to be shown on the screen.
I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.