Cate Shortland

Born :

August 10, 1968

I feel like I need just to keep trying to make the work for the right reasons. I think part of that is working with really good people, and just trying to make strong truthful work. And not being diverted from that.

strong people thinking

I studied fascism when I was at university. My husband's family are German Jews. I'm very close to his grandma and she left Berlin when she was 19 in 1937. So, it's kind of all around me.

berlin grandma husband

The biggest challenge was to make sure that we are looking at things honestly and truthfully. We weren't making an apologist film. That was the toughest part.

honestly film challenges

Kathryn Bigelow is a really good example of somebody that has maintained her truth and she makes the films she wants to make and she hasn't let other people affect her too much. Her last film is to me so inspiring and the way she sees war, the way she set up those really intimate relationships in and amongst this carnage.

intimate-relationships war people

Every film you do, you always look at it and you think, "I could do better," but I'm never going to tell people what I could do better. I think it's up to them to make up their own mind.

mind people thinking

Try and withhold your judgment, because as soon as you think you know something, you're shutting down.

shutting-down trying thinking

I'm a really judgmental person, and it just dumbs everything down. It doesn't create any room for interrogation or investigation.

investigation judgmental rooms

It's so easy to say "evil Nazi monsters," but as soon as we do that, we take away the fact that it was individuals committing individual acts of murder. They had children, and what does that do? As soon as you generalize, they become monsters. It doesn't allow you to understand it in any kind of sophisticated way.

evil monsters children