Barry Jenkins

I don't choose to make movies as small as the movies I've made. The combined budget of my two films is far under $5 million, but it's just by necessity that it ends up being that way.

I was hiding behind athletics and all my jockitude, so I didn't have to deal with being ostracized as the weird art kid.

As a writer, a blank page will humble the hell out of you. It always does, and it always will.

It used to be that watching a film was a very special occasion, the same way flying was. Before, if you took a flight from New York to L.A., most of the windows would be open. Now, we get on planes and we just close them because we're so used to what it feels like. I think the same thing has happened with cinema.

I love production. I could do it 365 days a year. Post is different. It's just too slow, and everything is very finite.

A month alone would make me so happy. Not good for my dating prospects.

As a filmmaker whose first film was made with the DIY tools of digital cinema, I love how the democratization of the filmmaking process and platforms like YouTube enables people to tell stories that in previous generations simply could not be told.

I really sort of kept to myself. I kind of just watched the world. And I think to keep people from messing with me, yeah, you know, I went out to run track. I went out for the football team. Not because I love track or love football.

It's interesting because I think class is a heavy, heavy part of 'Moonlight,' and I think, in a certain way, through the sum of all these parts, it's become a commentary on the black experience in America.

I think everybody can identify, you know, with this sort of struggle to decide for yourself who you are, you know, and what your place in life is.

I think it's really important to remind, reinforce people that their lives have value, you know? That their lives have worth.

Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death.