"The way I get through life, you need both things, fantasy and reality. You need imagination - you've got to be able to recreate the world often, to get through it, and not get bogged down by the facts of life: they get pretty boring after a time. I resent the fact that I'm getting old, because it gets harder to do; when you see Jeliza-Rose she's constantly imagining and reinventing the world. Constantly. And that's what one gets to do when making films, it's probably what I do when I make a film; for that brief moment I am reinventing the world into a form that makes sense within itself."

(iii) Unlikely romance...

"I think the relationship is the thing that is most disturbing to people, a 10-year old with a 20-year-old's mind in a relationship with a 20-year-old with a 10-year old's mind. Putting them together and all the possibilities... that's dangerous, because one of our panic words these days is paedophilia, and child abuse. These are the things that sell newspapers these days."

"I thought we walked that line really carefully, without going over the edge. I never felt we're being voyeuristic, salacious or manipulative. My wife thinks it's shocking because it's innocent, and it is innocent. That was our feeling when making it: try and remain innocent, and what was interesting was that Jodelle was the one that always embarrassed us by going places that we felt uncomfortable with. Because she was the little girl with the innocence; that's what it's about - it's springtime for a little girl."

(iv) Resilience of children & importance of fairytales...

"I like to think that children are tough, they are resilient, and all sorts of things happen to them. Maybe it is because everyone has become so bourgeoisie, saying that the child must be protected from everything. A few years ago I bumped into a German lady with a young daughter and she wouldn't read her Grimm's Fairytales, because they were disturbing. But they're not disturbing, they prepare kids for life. Any good fairy tale is really just an old folktale that has been around for a long time so they're dealing with something that's lower and deeper..."

(v) Importance of visual fabric...

"The visual fabric and the story, are not separate for me, and it seems to me that if you're going to be hiring really good actors then you've got to trust them; I mean Brendon was worried that he was going too far over the top too often, but I didn't feel that. He's an extreme character, and a lot of people won't like that.

"If you look at paintings through the middle ages and Renaissance, they are full of information, other than just a guy or a girl, there are symbols there and things that mean things and I hope in my films that the visual side also has meaning. So in the case of Tideland it's very simple; we have the interior of a decaying rotting house, and you've got these beautiful experiences, one's open and free and beautiful and the other's dark and more disturbing. It's very simple in that sense, you have these two worlds that one is playing with, and there's not much action going on, other than a little girl running here and running there or standing there talking. So there's less distraction."

(vi) Alice In Wonderland?

"Shooting the scene when Jeliza-Rose falls down the hole with the dolls' heads, I tried to do it realistically, but I just failed... [laughs]. No, when you're dealing with dolls, or puppets, or cartoons, or theatre, the audience is willing to give much more of themselves, and to do a little work. I think that's the problem with technology now, and it's going to fail, we'll want to go back to the Punch show where we can believe that's Punch and that's Judy. With a lot of stuff I do, while some people find it confusing, others enjoy it because it doesn't give you all the answers.

"Choosing the doll set, we had to become like kids, because even though Mitch Cullin had written the book, and we had written the screenplay, when it came to choosing the dolls a whole bunch of new ideas came up, and I realised which dolls were to represent which specific aspects of Jeliza-Rose. Neither the novel nor the screenplay had done that, so you've got to just get in there and play. The other thing was that looking at the pictures Lewis Carroll took of Alice Liddell, she looked just like Jodelle. And we tried to be like that; having Jodelle leading the way..."

(vii) Religion...

"We had God out there, because the house we shot was owned by an evangelical cowboy - he was a big Python fan. A bit like Dwight Yoakam! He was an interesting man and that's why I added a bit of evangelical nature to Dell. That's why we wrote the song... it was in the book to some degree, but we thought we'd push it. She's desperate, she's become evangelical: thought some folks might get irritated by the lyrics 'wash in the blood of Jesus.' That's not normally what is sung. She's desperate, and that's why at the dinner table she's forcing this religion down people's throats, it's what she had to cling to after Noah had gone and dumped her. Mum dies and all she's got is Jesus."

(viii) Killing the beast...

"After Dickens has blown up the train, killed the shark, well that's what's so interesting about having a child there - all this death and people bleeding all over the place and she's not really interested, her hero's there, and he's done it. And that's an innocent walking through it, with no awareness of the reality of the world around her. Children are very selfish. They're resilient and they're selfish."

(ix) A far from happy ending...?

"I don't think Jeliza-Rose does get what she wants; she would love Dickens and the baby, but she's not going to get that. She'll probably get something very safe, and life will become normal for her, but she'll never have anything as intense, as wonderful, or magical as this brief period, these few days she has. That's the other side of things, I feel you remember your childhood, you remember moments - think of what you did as a child, but I only remember a few moments, but they were intense ones. That's kind of what she'll go through, I think..."