Roger Ross Williams

I'm definitely drawn to stories about outsiders. Feeling like that myself as a gay black man, I often seek to give a voice to those in the world who don't have one.

I grew up poor, black, and working class.

Wiseman's films are some of the most pure cinema, and to take a journey in a Wiseman film is like no other. He's been doing it so long, with a body of over 40 films!

Everyone has relationships. Breakups are hard. Everyone graduates from school.

I began filming 'God Loves Uganda' by first meeting some of the Ugandan and American missionaries who have helped create Uganda's evangelical movement. They were often large-hearted. They were passionate and committed.

The relationship between a director and an editor in documentaries is so important.

Why should someone be allowed to remain a voting member of the Academy if they are no longer active in the industry?

I made a film about a person living with a disability. Those kinds of films are often about the disability, not who a person is.

I never watched much TV at home - it just wasn't part of our home culture.

When I was filming 'Prudence' in Zimbabwe, I noticed the hold fundamentalist Christianity had on sub-Saharan Africa. So I thought I'd like to make a film about religion in Africa because the prosperity gospel is big business where people are desperate, poor, and sick.

I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me - for all that it represented belonging, love and community - it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist-style church with a choir, a band, and music, but I've been asking myself my whole life, 'Why is my own church, my own community, rejecting me because of my sexuality?'