Sally Potter: some moviemakers live for the deal-making, others for the power and fame. But for this british writer-director, creating In the shadows of film fantasy is what it's always been about

STEPHEN MOOALLEM: I've read interviews in which you talked about a line of poetry providing the impetus for a film. Where did Yes, your latest project, come from?

SALLY POTTER: It came from at least two places. One was a direct, intuitive response to 9/11, because I think typically what big traumatic events do is induce feelings of helplessness and paralysis. The outside world was compelling me to make something. And then the impetus that perhaps had a much longer history in me was to write in verse.

SM: At the heart of the movie is a relationship between an Irish-American woman and a Middle Eastern man--9/11 can't help but impact the way we now think about that.

SP: Absolutely--beginning with a great big clash of fundamentalisms.

SM: Interestingly, both are scientists: She is an actual scientist who looks through her microscope at these very basic elements of human life, and he had been a doctor. It's a dynamic that sets up this tug between science and romance and made me wonder whether, when things are really broken down as far as they can go, differences become in some way less resolvable.

SP: I think everything is resolvable with listening and respect; but when people take the leap into a faith that will not be subject to rationality, you get into really difficult terrain. This is why some people are calling what we're now living with globally a clash of fundamentalisms, Islam versus Christianity. What happens in the film, however, is that the two characters learn to respect each other's differences by listening.

SM: For years now you've made films dealing with either women or female entities. Do you feel a kind of responsibility to keep showcasing these female perspectives, or do you feel completely free?

SP: I feel completely free. I'm just following a certain desire to a particular character or a story wherever it takes me. I've found that everyone, depending on their own point of view, finds a different center to the story. So in Yes, some people see Joan Allen's character as the definitive protagonist, whereas others see the center as being Simon Abkarian's character. People find their own points of identification depending on what fits with, or challenges, their own world view.

Stephen Mooallem is Interview's senior editor.

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