Stephen Daldry's debut, Billy Elliot, was a highlight of Edinburgh, not least because of its upbeat yet honest narrative and a startling performance from Jamie Bell. Having wowed Cannes, Edinburgh and Toronto, the film is already being eyed-up for next year's BAFTA (British Academy Awards) and Oscar spots. Asked to name the two bright lights of British theater, many would say Sam Mendes and Stephen Daldry. Some would say only Stephen Daldry.

The former director of the Royal Court, and the man behind the National Theater's legendary production of JB Priestly's "An Inspector Calls", Daldry is the last of his generation to get into film. The exodus started by Nicholas Hytner (Madness of King George, The Crucible) has been hotly followed by Matthew Warchus (Simpatico), Trevor Nunn (Twelfth Night) and of course Sam Mendes (not to mention Anthony Minghella and Mike Figgis who both started in the theater).

FilmFestivals.com: What are the main differences between film and theater?

Stephen Daldry: Obviously, because this is my first film I don’t have huge experience of working in the movies but it seems to me that there is not much of a relationship between the two at all. They seem to be entirely different disciplines. The only thing I think you can bring as a theater director, and I say this very sensitively, is an awareness of story and that I’ve worked with actors all my life, that’s it really. Everything else is entirely new.
The main difference really, without getting too technical about it, is that all theater methodology and working with actors is predicated on the idea of repeated action. In other words, the actor has to repeat the action night after night and performance after performance: in film this is not true, when working with actors in movies you are after a moment. The actor isn’t in charge of the rhythm nor the story - I’m in charge - whereas on stage the actor must tell the story and the story’s rhythm is also determined by the actor on stage. This also means that you can use other methodologies to get them to do what you want. Also you have a totally different way of working with kids, they don’t need know about any of the usual difficulties and they only need to take responsibility for a minute moment.

Would you say that with the likes of yourself, Warchus, Hytner, Mendes and even Figgis, that theater has become in the UK, like the BBC was, a training ground for the movies?

No. I think that the idea that theater has become a training ground for film is ludicrous. Theater is its own brilliant, fantastic world with its own set of rules and its own joys and delights. There is a little bubble at the moment with theater directors moving over to movies I don’t know why. What’s interesting is this generation of directors, in so much that we are all aware of one another, we know and help each other. But there have been other moments where this has occurred, perhaps the most famous was, again out of the Royal Court, in 1960’s with Woodfall Films and the likes of Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson, all that lot. I think it happens because the opportunity is there.

I hear that you stepped down as artistic director of the Royal Court because you wanted to pursue movies. Is that the real reason?

I don’t whether I put it like that. I said I didn’t want to stay at the Royal Court because I think I would have been there for too long. Apparently the natural thing to do as I was rebuilding the theater was to leave when it opened but that would have sent the theater into a crisis. I had to time it so that my successor was up and running so that when the new theater opened there wouldn’t be an evacuation of all the artistic staff.

Do you think that the success of Mendes added any pressure to your production?

I think that out of our generation the ‘uncle’ is Nick Hytner because he was the first one to do it. Nick is an incredibly helpful and generous man and so we’ve all referred to Nick in our short careers, he’s been incredibly helpful. Because it’s a group of people that know each other quite well it’s a collegiate atmosphere and there’s no rivalry, so no pressure really.

Having done the works of Arnold Wesker and Caryl Churchill and JB Priestly, how important is politics in your work?

Well it’s a good question. Well I’m an old soft lefty really, that’s the stuff I’m interested in and so that’s the stuff I tend to do.

Is that because it interests you or do you think that art with social conscience can instigate change?

I don’t know whether I’d describe it as social conscience necessarily but I do still stupidly believe that art can change the world and does. One wants, I want to have an active engagement in the problems and possibilities of the time I live in and, I suppose, most of the work I do is vaguely lefty.

How easy was it to get such an honest performance out of Jamie Bell?

Well Jamie’s fantastic, it was a total joy. You have to create the right emotional context in which the kid can flourish and I was very lucky with the crew, particularly Brian Tufano the DOP. To create an atmosphere on set that would allow the kids to play, it was safe and they could mess about with the cameras. It felt very safe and emotionally secure for the kids and it wasn’t just Brian, the whole crew were fantastic with the kids.

What was it like actually shooting in a mining community given the film's subject matter and everything that had happened there?

I think there was mixed feelings in Eastington to be honest, a lot felt very happy that we were shooting a film based around the miner’s strike and some thought that we were opening up old wounds - so it was mixed.

Was it the mining side of the story that attracted you to the film?

I spent a lot of time in Sheffield, went to university there and stayed on afterwards. My first paid job was working with a mining community just outside Sheffield with a company called Doncaster Arts Co-operative. During the strike we’d made a piece of work called, "Never the same again" that we’d toured around the Miners’ Welfares. It was a piece based on the wives of the miners so I suppose I was quite emotionally engaged to what was going on. So when Lee Hall sent the script in and I’d read it, I was instantly very happy to do it as it is one of the most important moments in post war domestic politics. It was the fight that changed everything. Margaret Thatcher very consciously stated that her intention was to destroy the consensus of 1945, which she managed to do. The battle with the unions focused and came to a culmination with her absolute determination to destroy not just the industrial base of this country but also the trade unions, the most powerful of which was the NUM. What she was up to was industrial genocide in a nutshell so you could criticise the film for not covering the big politics of that miners strike in detail. I’m aware of that but for me its still potent to remind everybody of what went on.

It’s a very up beat film - do you think the North has recovered from what happened in the mid-80’s?

I would say that neither the Durham coal field or the Northumberland coal field have recovered, I think those communities are underdeveloped and they don’t have the promise of regeneration, there is very little new industry. To my mind, what the miners and the NUM said was going to happen, ie. Mines shut down and communities torn apart, did actually happen.

Did you have any worries about making a social realist film given the number - and quality - that Britain has produced?

I don’t think I was nervous about that, more fucking terrified about where to put the camera! Obviously there are homage’s paid to those different filmmakers, some conscious and some not.

Why do you think it is we make so many films that focus on working class communities?

I don’t know why. Why do we make so many films with Helena Bonham-Carter prancing around a garden in a frock? What I find interesting is the high or low art debate that somehow, working class based, social realist films are often communicated within a high art sensibility. Mostly, I think those directors refer to the eastern Europeans for inspiration, which is weird. Somehow, what is popular culture, real or political life is arthouse. We were quite conscious that it should not be like that, we consciously fucked about with the argument that ballet should be high art within a film that could be described as low art. Described, that is, by a critical intelligentsia that would perceive it pejoratively as commercial but that was just us having fun.

What do you think JB Priestly would make of Billy Elliot?

Good question! I’ve no idea.

What are you working on now?

A play by Caryl Churchill at the Royal Court called, "Far Away."

Then back to film?

I’ll make another one next year. Perhaps a social realist remake of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang set in a fishing village in the North