I left Norway after high school and moved to Manhattan and went to film school in Manhattan. That's when I really found out that this was my calling and what I wanted to do.

Turing was uncompromisingly honest. As soon as he didn't think you were interesting or smart, he'd just turn around and walk away, even if you were in the middle of a sentence.

Sci-fi is about 'what if this happened,' and 'what would you do.' You can play around with social dilemmas, or look at society or, in my case, relationships, in a very different way.

The most serious problem doing biography is the matter of time because you have to shape events into a narrative of two hours; you have to create a dramatic arc. That can be a challenge.

Thank God sci-fi has moved away from spaceships fighting aliens! Now it's a place where you can explore contemporary issues or emotional feelings. You can put it all in a different setting.

I think that the test for taking on a project is to try and list all the reasons not to do it. When you find yourself running out of reasons, and you still have to do it, it's the right thing to do.

As a filmmaker, I don't want to limit myself to one kind of movie. After 'Headhunters,' I went to Hollywood and read a lot of scripts: lots of action thrillers and heist movies, and superhero films.

I love Fincher, as he has a great atmosphere and intensity. Also, I grew up watching Hitchcock movies, and there was something elegant in the way he plays with you and plays with the character and tricks you.

This is a man who was 23 years old when he theorized the idea of creating a programmable machine, and in that way, Turing foresaw computers and artificial intelligence. These were revolutionary ideas at that time.

To me, Alan Turing was a mystery - it was sort of like something I needed to unravel. And he was also obsessed with puzzles. So I wanted to make the movie like a mystery, like a puzzle that you're piecing together.

Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. Then you spend half a year in a dark room editing your film, and you don't talk to anybody.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it.

If I did the structure and had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that he's heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it - just to prove that he's gay?

I've always loved films, and I always felt like a storyteller. I left Norway after high school and moved to Manhattan and went to film school in Manhattan. That's when I really found out that this was my calling and what I wanted to do.

I didn't know anybody who was a filmmaker - there was no film industry where I grew up. I never knew what a director really did until I was in high school and I started reading up about it. I've always loved films, and I always felt like a storyteller.

I don't know if it's a sadistic side or whatever, but you take characters and put them in really awful situations and make them go through that. And it's very satisfying as a director to explore that, to tell those stories and to explore those themes, because it is so human.

To do a movie about someone who actually lived gives you two responsibilities. You have to try to be accurate to the facts of what he did and what he was like as a character. Then, at the same time, you have a responsibility to make a movie that entertains and can get an audience.

You find a story - or more importantly, you find some characters - that you want to be around as a filmmaker. The style and how we're going to shoot it and how we're going to design it and how it's all going to feel and look depends on that story. They tell me how I should shoot it.

You never know where your next movie is going to come from. You just have to fall in love with something because it's going to be taking up every moment of spare time in your life for about two years. You're going to be dreaming about it and thinking about it and becoming obsessed with it.

I thought I knew who Alan Turing was. I've always loved history, and I was actually shocked by how little I actually knew. I was amazed this wasn't common knowledge. Why wasn't he on the front covers of my history books? He's one of the great thinkers of the last century, and he was sort of pushed into the shadows.

You never have any idea where your movie's going to go when you're shooting - you're in this little bubble. Everything you care about is getting the next step right: getting the script right, finding the right actors, shooting it. Then you spend half a year in a dark room editing your film, and you don't talk to anybody.

Our film society back home is so different from here. Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language. It's just figuring things out and understanding the codes and how the system of Hollywood compares to that of Norway. We don't even have agents. There's no studio system, no managers.

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