What being a publicist gives me as a filmmaker is less fear. I know that anything can be promoted. So, you can never tell me no one is going to care about that story because I know the ways that movies can be sold and offered to people, the ways that you can invite people into a filmmaker's experience. It's not always just the subject matter. So, it gave me the confidence to make a film about caste. To say to myself that, hey, this might not be as big as a Marvel movie, but there will be people who are interested in human dignity, social justice and equity, and this film can be made.

The only challenging thing is that I just want more people to see it. The international distribution is something that comes a little bit later. The positives have been that when it comes to people who have seen it, I've had extraordinary conversations. People have disagreed with it, people have debated. People have embraced it, which is exactly what it was meant to do. It was really important for me that it came out last year in the United States. I wanted it to be talked about as people considered new leadership in the United States and the elections. And I feel that in the spaces where it was seen, it did exactly what I hoped it would do and my hope is that it continues to find its way out in the world.

I was naive about how passionate the denial is that the caste system exists in India. That some people would say it just doesn't exist. It’s the same kind of people who’d say there's no racism in the United States. What are you talking about? It's been illuminating in that way. There has been no distribution in India. So I just want to make a bunch of illegal copies and drop them off on the streets. If it's not being distributed there, then that means it's not making money there. So why not let it then be seen and still not make money there? I think that it has some important things to say and I also know that there were some Indian scholars who had issues with some of the things in the book that it is based on. That's why I wanted to bring in Suraj Yengde, a leading scholar on the issue of caste, to expand on some of the ideas and just try to be as responsible as possible. I felt very uncomfortable telling the story of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. I thought it should be an Indian filmmaker telling that story, but then do I leave him out of the film? So, I did my best. There's so much more to learn. I love India. I love being there. I hope I can go back to one of the best crews I've ever worked with in Delhi for a month. They were like an army. I wish I could bring them all with me wherever I go.

That's why I didn't feel like I was the right person to tell the story of Dr Ambedkar. That's not my story. That is a Dalit story. It should be a Dalit filmmaker telling that story. But I was making a film about caste so it felt wrong to leave him out, because he's one of the foremost thinkers on the issue. But the challenge was, there have been almost no international films about Dr Ambedkar. So, as an African American woman, I'm introducing him to people. It's just like White filmmakers introducing Rosa Parks to people. I felt that way. It's challenging. I do believe that people should tell their own stories. It doesn't mean that other people can't tell them, but they need to be involved as much as possible.

I was an early and very outspoken supporter of Netflix. I've been criticised for this and I think it's ridiculous. So, I'll say it again. It doesn't matter to me as much about the way in which the film is seen. I do not feel precious about it being seen in a theatre. Of course, I want it to be seen in a theatre, I've worked very hard on the sound, the picture calibration, the colour, everything, but the story is what's most important to me. As a woman filmmaker, as a Black filmmaker, as a Black woman filmmaker, the work being seen is the most important to me. The voice being heard is the most important to me. So, whether you see it on the back screen of an airplane seat, or you see it in IMAX, I just want you to see it.

Streaming is the reason I had a full room at the public conversation here yesterday; because of my work on Netflix. Otherwise, my work would not reach 190 countries around the world. They talked about When They See Us, which is a series that I did about a crime that the government committed against five black and brown boys. They knew 13th. That’s extraordinary.

I am often misunderstood: that I don't care about cinemas. Of course, I do but I also care about people watching it on streaming. Sometimes people want to see a film in a theatre. Sometimes they want to see it at home. I grew up in a neighbourhood where there was no movie theatre. I had to take the bus for an hour to get to one. So, do I just not see movies? What if, when I was growing up, there was a Netflix and I could see films from around the world, I could have access to things? The theatrical business is unsustainable in its current form, and there needs to be problem solving, and part of that is to animate people and invigorate people to see movies in the theatres. There's something about that experience. But until then, what are we going to do?

I have a small movie theatre in Los Angeles on our campus. It's a 50 seater, DCP compliant, Dolby. It's beautiful. It's free. Everything we show, whether I'm showing Iranian cinema, Korean masters, or I'm showing old African American black and white films, or the latest films that my friend (filmmaker-musician) Lin-Manuel Miranda brought me, it's always free to the community, and there's conversation, and there's food. It’s about building community around cinema. There’s a reason to not sit on your couch and watch a film—because you want to be with other people and be in a community. I think we need to nurture that kind of cinema experience, as opposed to “take my $20”, which is a lot of money. There is more to buy the popcorn, more to park the car. If I'm a person who makes $20 an hour, I can't do that, but for $20 I can see a world of films on my TV. We have to offer a different experience to people as opposed to complaining that people aren't going to the cinemas.

A very high profile African American actor who I love, texted me a few days ago. We're looking for something to do together and he liked a script and asked me what I thought. I liked it a lot, too, until the end, when the two Black men kill each other. I can't quite do that. It was fiction, kind of fun, actiony. But, for me, that's something for someone else to do. It won't be a part of my work to show Black people killing each other for fun. I use violence in my films. In Selma, When They See Us there's quite a bit of violence but it's rooted, and it's grounded in what is really happening to people, so that it can illuminate you, you can know and you can act, and you can advocate against it, as opposed to violence for sport.

I want to do a mystery, I want to do a romance. I want to do a thriller. I made A Wrinkle in Time. I did two television shows for DC comics that were based on comic books. Most people know me for social justice, but I've made all kinds of things. One of my favourites is a show I made called Home Sweet Home where two families swap houses. So, one family has to eat the other family's food, go to the other family's mosque or church, walk the other family's dog or iguana, whatever the other family does. The families are from different cultures but get to see that they're more alike than different. 

I find it really difficult to write. I have a good friend named Ryan Coogler, who's the director of Black Panther and Creed and a lot of big films, and one day I called him up just to check in on him, and his voice was excited. He was writing in a coffee shop and his voice was like he was in heaven. But writing is just very difficult for me. I'm fortunate that I can do it, but my process is a very intricate one called procrastination. I will wait until it has to be done, and I will complain the whole way.

On Origin my readers were my producing partner, Paul Garnes and my cinematographer, Matt Lloyd, and a very ferocious reader named (filmmaker) Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo gives incredible notes. He's very passionate. He's yelling the notes. He's telling you, think about this. What does this line mean? And you're sitting there taking all the notes in. He has been an incredible reader for me. As a fellow filmmaker, it was so valuable to get it from a director, writer. He also came into the editing room, which is how you rewrite a movie. I was so fortunate to have him in my corner.

I'm a student of history, so it's easy for us to feel like these are the worst times ever. They are not. If you study history about countries around the world, the difficulties and oppressions are such that you wonder how people even got up in the morning to face the day. We are not there. And so we keep hoping, we keep working, we keep making art, we keep raising our voices, we keep educating ourselves, and we continue. Is the future worrisome? Yes. Is it the most challenging time that I've seen politically in the United States in my personal history? Yes. But as a student of history and knowing what's happening in other places around the world, I think Americans are complaining too much. Yes, we, some of us, don't like it, but you have to deal with it and step into it and work for what you want to see.

It’s really just based on what the film tells me it wants to be. The story will tell me: I want to be a series. I'm long. You need five hours to tell me. Or I want to be a documentary. This is just about the information. The book I adapted into Origin was more about the emotion than the information. It could have been a doc, but it's a bit untraditional. I put it into a narrative form, a fiction form, because I wanted it to have emotion, engender empathy. And luckily, we're in a time right now where we can use all kinds of tools, different mediums.

Agnes Varda,  just seeing her move from fiction to nonfiction, shorts, experimental, all mixed in. She's been a great inspiration for me. Spike Lee was also an inspiration in that way—docs, features, music videos, commercials with Michael Jordan, anything that he wanted to do. I'm fortunate I get to do it all.

That could be interesting. I think if an artist is controlling the AI, then it could lead to interesting places. I'm not good with “just turn on the computer and let it run our lives”. But if an artist is using AI to go into the pyramids or to imagine life on another planet, or do things like that. The thing that's really encouraged me about AI that I've researched and been in many lectures about, because I'm interested in it, for some family members, is health and what it's doing in terms of cures for diseases, thinking of a million ways to solve a problem that we can't solve. That’s the kind of thing that's exciting. When you apply it to art, it's a little funky, but it's all happening. It's the same thing with streaming, it's happening. So we can be mad about it, or we can learn about it and try to bend it to our will.

I made a documentary about her, her Wimbledon wins, and her activism around each win. I remember interviewing her at the time. I was an emerging filmmaker, just starting out. She was famous, but she was very quiet and very reserved. Over the years I've seen her become more outspoken. We both grew up, we've kept in good touch. She's a very sweet woman, and such an icon.

So I'm going back to making a documentary. I am going back to a space where I'm exploring some things about American history that people should know. It’ll be out this time next year.