You were involved with this project from the very beginning. Can you describe your early conversations with White Material director Claire Denis and your relationship with her?
Claire and I have been friends forever. We’ve always known each other; we’ve always been in touch. We’re very close. She’s a part of my artistic family, although I’ve never worked with her before. I had read this book by Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing, and we were having conversations about doing a movie together and I asked her what she thought [about that book]. She loved the book but didn’t want to stick with it… [she] kept the idea about doing a movie about a French woman in Africa, getting far away from the book. I think she wanted to create a more contemporary character, a more active woman. More like a character that would come out of Coetzee, the great South African writer. She ended up asking Maria N’Diaye — who is a great French writer; winner of the Prix Goncourt last year — to collaborate. That’s how we ended up doing the movie.

Early in White Material, a character accuses Maria of refusing to leave because she doesn’t want anyone to “take what she has.” What do you think Maria thinks she has, at that point?
I don’t think she has; I think she’s more defined by what she is by staying in that country. It was never about possession or the greedy need to keep whatever she has. In fact, she doesn’t have much. That’s really important in the angle Claire chooses to follow that woman. She says – and that’s an interesting and important precision – she says to the workers in the truck, “I don’t possess anything. I’m not the owner. I’m the boss, but I’m not the owner.” So, you see, she does not have the mentality of owner.The stepfather is the owner. But she’s not an owner.