I am fascinated by that person who is trying to live authentically, but they are on the outside of society, so how do they manage in the world around them?

Andrew Haigh

Categorized in : I Am Live World Society

We can all understand that feeling of being alone in the world trying to find ways to not be alone.

alone feeling being-alone world

I'm interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves.

define our how understand

If you don't open your eyes to other people's lives, you can't even begin to understand how the world works at all.

eyes you people world

People don't think the struggles gay people have are worth talking about because everyone's decided that we're all equals now. Those struggles are much more subtle now. But the weight of being different does carry on.

think being-different gay people

It fails everybody, pretty much, the American Dream, but people are driven by it. I don't think we're driven by the same sense of hope in Europe. We're driven by pessimism more.

think american-dream hope people

SXSW can feel very male, very straight, and very white, and though it's a great festival, when you have a film that's different, it's hard to find your place.

feel great you white

A lot of gay-themed films are terrible. And mainstream audiences and the press aren't interested, understandably.

press interested lot terrible

My straight friends accept I'm gay but they forget that some people don't. Even now, if I go into a party, people don't usually assume I'm gay, so you have to keep coming out. And if you say you've got a film with a gay subject matter, you can sometimes see people's eyes going, 'Oh! OK!'

eyes you friends people

I've always felt like an outsider, whether in school or when I'm working or within the industry or just in society at large.

like always society school

I think people do like extremes in cinema. There are very few films told about everyday middle-class couples, which is odd to me, as there are a lot of everyday middle-class couples.

think me cinema people

My films are very everyday, and people don't always want to go to the cinema to see ordinary lives. They want to see something a bit more extraordinary. I get that desire, but it's not the kind of film I want to make.

go see cinema people

Lots of shows get cancelled, and then they never get to end their stories. It's just over.

over end never just

You can achieve one thing, but because of that, you have to adapt or lose something else. If you end up in a relationship, you sometimes have to lose the closeness of your friendships, for example, or you have to move away somewhere... For me, that creates the sense of melancholy which I think exists in most people's lives.

me you relationship people

When I started making films, it was never that I had this great ambition to only do gay-themed material.

only never great ambition

I think it is a burden... that we constantly realise that there isn't that much rhyme or reason to why something happens. If we think about that too much, it can make all of our decisions very stressful.

something think too-much reason

I'm not very good at thinking, 'This is the thing I should do now to help my career.' I mean, I want to keep my career going, but that's not what draws me to a story.

story good me thinking

I was not a happy teenager in the slightest.

slightest teenager happy

I don't want a performance to give me everything. You can look at Charlotte Rampling in '45 Years,' and you don't really know what she's thinking, but you know something interesting is happening.

look me you thinking

In stories, those are the moments that hit me the most: when people really don't expect it, don't have it much in their lives, and suddenly, an act of kindness. It's like, 'Oh, God! Heartbreaking!'

me god kindness people

The longer you get in a relationship, the harder it becomes to confront problems.

problems get you relationship