Sarah Gavron Quotes

We petitioned to get access to film [Suffragette] at the Houses of Parliament and we whooped with joy when we were allowed in, as this is the first ever commercial film to shoot there.

It was important to focus on working-class women because we so rarely focus, particularly in period films, on the working people. The suffragettes brought together women of all classes, which was one of the striking things about the movement.

The challenging of repression by a new generation of activists - from Malala Yousafzai to Pussy Riot - across the globe reminded us how many women are still fighting for basic human rights. Our great-grandmothers' struggle in all its shocking detail seemed so relevant.

I want people to be inspired! To remember how hard-fought the battle for the vote was, the debt we owe to women who paved the way for this more egalitarian society we live in, how critical it is to use our vote and to be counted.

It's interesting when you read the debates in parliaments between MPs about whether they should give women a vote. It's a lot of fear; it is fear of change. It's fear if women get to vote, family structures will break down. Women will stop having children. Women won't vote for war.

My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.

I think it's easy to hold on to this romantic hope that communities such as Niaqornat won't change, because we're in this world where progress is unstoppable, and they're a link to some idealised past.

Niaqornat particularly seemed to offer a heightened version of a story being played out across the world about traditional communities' struggle for survival and their attempts to renegotiate their identity in the face of modern life.

So many women don't have voices in their governments.

I was taught nothing about the suffragettes in school. The version I eventually got was mainly about the peaceful campaigning of the constitutional suffragists. Their work was vital, but there was this other, not widely known story of the women who risked everything, who were prepared to break every taboo.

I've endlessly found myself in rooms of men and had the experience of feeling I wasn't being heard. It's a confidence thing.

I would love to see more diversity on all sides, and not just in terms of women; we need people from different walks of life making films.

I remember my grandfather believed women were second-class citizens and told my mother that it was a shame she had brains because she was a girl and shouldn't carry on her education.

I think it's great to be talked about as a woman film-maker. It's part of who I am; it affects me daily. I want it to be part of the conversation. I'm for any scheme or initiative that gives women a way in.

As a teenager, I was really interested in drama and art. I did painting and drawing. I did some acting and loved theater.

With 'Suffragette,' I was emboldened that there were so many women around me. We had a female writer, producers, production and costume designers.

In Bangladesh, if you put a kiss in a film, it's political.

I had wanted to make this film [Suffragette] for over a decade. There has never been a cinematic rendition of this story. I had not been taught any of the history of the movement at school, and the version I had gleaned had been the Mary Poppins story of women in large hats, petitioning. There was another version.

'Suffragette' is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fight for the right to vote.

Just going to Bangladesh was an experience ... if you go into small villages in the U.K., they're backward and culturally devoid. But if you go into small villages in Bangladesh, they have classical music concerts.

I started to have these ideas for films. They were like running images in my head. But I didn't think I could be a director. I just literally didn't think it was a possibility. Then I started to suddenly see films of women.

Surround yourself with people who support you. Find champions.

It's well proven that if you have equality in society, society flourishes, and if you have inequality, it doesn't. So it's good for everybody.

The suffragettes endured 50 years of broken government promises and not being heard. The press never reported on their activities.

I had a mother who got involved in grassroot politics when I was growing up. I watched her have agency and become political in a very male-dominated world.

In a way, perhaps, there's an advantage of being on the edge of something and looking in as the observer, because as the filmmaker, you're the storyteller, and you're pulling out this universal story.

I made lots of short films, about nine or ten short films. And then I made a television film called 'This Little Life.'

It's my mission in life to put people on the screen who don't get normally represented.

We need to have more conversations about representation as well as the imbalance in terms of needing more women behind the camera and in front of the camera, and the diversity factor.

The suffragettes were quite strategic about documenting their events, and there were some good photos. And we developed a roll of film that had never been developed before!

It was only when I saw films in my early 20s by Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Sally Potter and Kathryn Bigelow, I started to think, 'Oh, it's possible.' I dared to suggest that I wanted to train to be a film director.

I suppose I do have an interest in stories that show complexity.

Having the vote is just symbolic. There are still many issues on which women don't have any right and, in many countries, where women are given very very few rights.

I'm very interested in cinema that explores emotional journeys and where you can use everything at your disposal cinematically to locate you inside someone's head and their emotional landscape.