Jehane Noujaim

I'll continue making films because I love being able to drop into other people's worlds. My goal is to be constantly learning.

You know, Arabs are critical of United States foreign policy, but they also associate the U.S. with democratic principles and opportunity.

In making films, I'm constantly looking for people who are in conflict and who are going to surprise you and challenge you.

Look at the Civil Rights Movement. Look at any kind of fight for change. People had to keep fighting and taking their rights. Rights are never given to you. They have to be fought for and they have to be taken.

There are different opinions across the Middle East of Al-Jazeera. They've been kicked out of Egypt and Jordan and then let back in; they've been totally banned from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Syria.

I used to do volunteer work in poor areas of Cairo, and people would gather their money together to get a satellite dish. You'd see them huddling around and for the first time seeing issues being debated on TV that had never been talked about before. And that is the biggest promoter of democracy you could possibly have.

When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have a dialogue when the basis of information is just so completely different?'

It's important in any project to remain focused.

I have actually been very fortunate to be able to make films on my own credit card without having huge funders behind me dictating how the story should be told.

Being a filmmaker is kind of like being a glorified spy.

There are these very poor communities on the outskirts of Cairo called Mokattam, where a lot of the garbage collectors live. I used to volunteer there, doing health and education work when I was younger and living in Egypt.

Traveling around the world during the World Cup in 2006, I was thinking, 'Wow, this is such an incredible and global event.'