What makes a great com­ing-of-age movie?

“I’ve always felt that there are too many social para­me­ters that are telling peo­ple – no mat­ter who or what you are – that there are cer­tain aspects of your­self that are not okay; not per­mis­si­ble to explore, express, embrace, be. In the broad­est sense, Giant Lit­tle Ones is a response to the idea that humans beings are con­formable. I don’t think we are. What looks like con­for­mi­ty is just the frag­men­ta­tion of whole­ness… which is con­fus­ing and painful to people.

“I also want­ed to say some­thing about labels. There are more labels now than ever and like all words they can be use­ful indi­ca­tors, but they are also lim­iters. Clear­ly tak­ing on and own­ing a label for one­self can be vital­ly impor­tant for those who have had been mar­gin­alised or dis­cred­it­ed for who they are. It’s impor­tant to be able to say ​‘I am this’ as a way of reclaim­ing one­self. But I think labels can often end up act­ing like las­sos that catch us and keep us on a length of rope that deter­mines how far off we are allowed to venture.

“I think it relates a lot about the expe­ri­ence of being young and try­ing to know and define one­self, try­ing to be true to that. So, there’s a lot of emo­tion­al­i­ty, strug­gle, pain and con­fu­sion as well as the won­der and thrill of big and new feel­ings and expe­ri­ence. But there is also some­thing more nuanced run­ning through the sto­ry, which I think is not typ­i­cal of a lot of com­ing-of-age films. I think it real­ly gets at the ten­der­est core of the human heart and doesn’t offer a ​‘Well, here’s the answer’ moment. Instead, I want­ed the film to cul­mi­nate in a state­ment that was ambigu­ous and yet felt intrin­si­cal­ly true.

“My favourite films of any type always go back to the amaz­ing expe­ri­ence of dis­cov­er­ing films while at film school. So, watch­ing films like The 400 Blows, The Bicy­cle Thief, Ivan’s Child­hood were drop-jaw mind-blow­ing to me. In a more con­tem­po­rary vein, I real­ly enjoyed The Spec­tac­u­lar Now, Y Tu Mamá Tam­bién, Boy­hood. I thought Book Smart was so spe­cial. Oh, and The Grad­u­ate – it’s the per­fect film in my view. Did any of these influ­ence the mak­ing of Giant Lit­tle Ones? I’d say the first two in that they showed to me how much of the human heart could be shown with­out need­ing char­ac­ters to talk about it.”

Giant Lit­tle Ones is avail­able now on dig­i­tal down­load and on DVD from 10 February.