Patricia Rozema

Canadian director Patricia Rozema made her name with the quirky, contemporary independent features I've Heard the Mermaids Singing and When Night Is Falling. She changed direction with the period film Mansfield Park, an adaptation of Jane Austen's most difficult novel. "It's a tangled and dark work with a kind of atmosphere of sexuality and menace on the whole," says Rozema, as she talks candidly and intelligently about how she created a film that brought a modern perspective to its interpretation of the Jane Austen novel, while remaining true to the spirit of the book.