While I was doing the residency in Paris, I found out that I was chosen as one of the five winners of the Focus Features Africa First Program. All this happened less than a year after I made my first two short films.

There are a lot of filmmakers I love whose work doesn't inspire mine at all. For example: Quentin Tarantino. From his films you can see that he has a wicked sense of humour, and I love that!

Nollywood is a genre, and not the entire Nigerian film industry. However none of the 'New wave' of directors in Nigeria would know what was possible without the Nollywood model, so I'm grateful to them for showing us that our stories are of interest to people other than Nigerians. I would describe myself as a filmmaker, period.

The audience I'm targeting doesn't care about the language spoken in the films they watch. They're interested in more important things like story, performance, cinematography etc.

I prefer to discover new talent by holding open auditions.

I definitely don't intend to only make films about Nigerians or Africans. I want to make films about people, any people.

There was no way I was going back to school to study anything for another three or four years. I was done with that. So I tried working on other people's projects, but didn't find any where I felt I could learn what I needed to learn.

As a filmmaker you make your films with the audience you want to attract in mind.

While my work is usually about the Igbo woman experience, there are many aspects of my female characters that women everywhere can and do relate to.

I have loved filmed from when I was a child, but I never considered it as a future career.