Is it true your break in the industry was co-presenting a football show in Singapore?

Yes. I studied literature and did lots of theatre directing in college. After we graduated, my mates went up to the Edinburgh Fringe but I felt I needed to do something else. I went first to San Diego to do a sales job, which was awful, and then through my mum heard about this presenting job. My parents are missionaries and know nothing about the industry but she met a production assistant at a barbecue who was looking for a female co-anchor. [When I was offered the role] I said to the company, “Look if I do the presenting job, will you hire me on the production team as well?” I was co-producing the show by the end of the year.

Was it difficult to secure funding for your first feature, Africa United?

What really unlocked it was one of our development execs putting in not a huge amount of money but enough to fund us doing a development trip and getting the script written. Pathé came in at draft one but it was totally off the back of the script being there.

Why did you decide to make the same journey from Rwanda to South Africa that the characters do in the film as part of your development process?

We were writing a road trip so it felt right to develop [the script] while doing a road trip to get the tempo of how it feels to be on the road. So much of the film is inspired by real moments even though it’s kind of a fairytale. [The character of] Celeste is inspired by a girl we met through a group that was trying to rehabilitate ex-child soldiers and ex-street workers. We chatted through the story with a bunch of ex street kids in Burundi, asking them, “What would you be scared of?” “How would you protect yourself?” and “Would you take the risk?”

What should you bear in mind when directing children?

Casting is almost more important: find kids who can deal with the process of being on a shoot, who are going to be good with other people, who aren’t going to get stressed out, who aren’t going to cause problems and whose parents, crucially, aren’t going to cause problems because parents are going to be on set all the time as well. Apart from that you’re just looking for somebody who can bring their own instincts to the part. Most kids don’t have the resources to be able to populate a part in the way that a really good actor will, so you want them to relax and feel like them being them is what you want to see

What are your words of advice for young filmmakers?

Nobody’s going to give you any permission and nobody owes you any favours. If you want to be doing big stuff, do small stuff first. When that’s done, show it to loads of people and then do another thing. I think the universe responds to action. There are two great quotes. One is by Goethe, and it goes: “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it”. And the other one is by Miles Davis: “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”

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