When I look back upon the choices I made in making Mansfield Park, I feel they were pretty ballsy. I just thought there has to be a reason why I was … - Patricia Rozema

Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work … for instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.

I have become post facto a representative of the country. So if you ask, "Is Mermaids a Canadian film?" — it has become one. It has become a means whereby people characterize Canadian film. I think in the creation of Mermaids, I did see it in political terms. I thought of the underdog. Canada is not a superpower by any means. It's very quietly, comfortably democratic, but it's plagued by a sense of inferiority.

I wanted [Martin] to be a really decent human being because I didn't want to depict the cliché that a woman becomes a lesbian because her husband is terrible to her.