Sophie Hyde’s debut fiction film “52 Tuesdays” won the directing award in the World Cinema Dramatic section at Sundance and the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2014. Her other credits include episodic series “F**king Adelaide” and documentary feature “Life in Movement.”

“Animals” will premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 28.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

SH: “Animals” is about a friendship between two women and the conflict of change. It follows a woman, Laura, who is emerging from an all encompassing 10 years of partying with her best friend and would-be-muse, Tyler.

While they have rallied against the traditional expectations of being a woman, Laura is rattled when she falls in love with someone else. “Animals” explores her conflicted and competing desires, her fight to determine her own path, and how to let go of the things you love.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

SH: I read Emma Jane Unsworth’s book [of the same name] and I was really excited by the visceral quality of it and the way the character’s body was part of the experience — it felt familiar but strangely rare to read. I loved the way it examined longings and desires without being overly sentimental nor too cynical and it celebrated friendship and the party while also questioning elements of these things and considering how we actually manage to combine the various parts of ourselves and our lives and our desires.

Then of course I met Emma and producer Sarah Brocklehurst and those women responded to the version of the film I was interested in and gave me confidence in what we could make. They are both excellent and inspired me to want to tell the story.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

SH: I want them to think about the people they have loved for a glimmer, season, or lifetime that might not be around anymore, by choice or circumstance, and the way those loves are a gift and not a failure because they are not current.

I want people to feel seduced by both the party and the deep friendship, sexual desire, freedom, and tantalizing living that the girls in the film aspire to, and equally drawn to the freedom of working hard and creating and finding a way to express yourself, make things, and build your own life for what you need. Is all of that possible?

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

SH: Creating the best work you can that is engaging for an audience, while ensuring your own values and thoughts about the world are reflected and you are creating with generosity and good grace is always a huge challenge — but that’s a good, solid challenge that we work towards every day.

On “Animals,” there were logistical challenges of doing a co-production between Ireland and Australia, and many financial challenges, particularly when we couldn’t raise the funds out of the UK, which was the birthplace of the story. It was also a big challenge to finance a female-led story.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

SH: We had the good fortune to be making “Animals” in two countries where there is government support for filmmaking. Both Ireland and Australia are small countries — and therefore small markets — where the importance of seeing our culture and our own unique perspectives is valued enough that money is invested. Without this we would see such a diminished amount of reflection and challenge of our own lives and certainly would struggle to see any kind of screen industry be able to grow or thrive.

The film is financed with the support of Australia’s federal funding body, Screen Australia, state funding body South Australian Film Corporation, the wonderful Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund, the Australian tax offset, and Screen Ireland, the Irish funding body. Added to this is some market investment, some brilliant and much loved private investment, and gap finance.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

SH: I like making with other people. What inspired me was truthfully a very selfish idea that I liked to create with other people. My dream day might include some time writing and thinking solo but I love to discuss and dream up and have robust conversations and try to find ways to make something beautiful, thoughtful, difficult out of that.

As I started to become a filmmaker I became more inspired by the idea that as storytellers, we are part of a tradition of reflecting and challenging culture, and that means being able to question, provoke, consider, and disrupt the status quo. Now that is what inspires me.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

SH: A filmmaker once told me that if I wanted to be a director I shouldn’t have children. While that was coming from a place of advice and generosity, that was the singular worst piece of advice I have ever been given. Having a child has allowed my work to flourish, even within the challenges of not being footloose.

The second worst piece of advice I continue to hear at every event and meeting about the dire problem of representation of women in film is that we should learn to be more confident and pitch ourselves better, and that we should [project] strength.

As hard as it can be in relation to getting work, I have found my doubt, collaborative tendencies, and willingness to present my weaknesses alongside my strengths has been the guiding light of creating meaningful work with wonderful people. My desire to question and sit inside the unknown a bit — and not know the answers at every moment — [is a different kind of strength].

I believe we should be asking why the the same kind of people continue to be employed as directors and whether we are missing out on other values and other people to lead and create.

So that’s two bad bits of advice.

[As for good advice,] I read an article with Jennifer Fox recently where she essentially talked about the creative muscle she built making documentaries where she felt OK to swim inside the unknown.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

SH: I’m going to steal from someone else, because this advice has been helpful for me. Rainer Maria Rilke said, “Your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. … Test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed; perhaps also protesting. But don’t give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers — perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.”

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

SH: Oh no. There are many but there are two that always spring to mind: Lynne Ramsay’s “Morvern Callar” and Carine Adler’s “Under the Skin,” both with the exceptional Samantha Morton.

Like so many of us, I grew up and was heavily influenced by so many male writers and directors, but I have a strong — and increasingly thirsty — taste for films by women including Jane Campion, Mia Hansen-Løve, Jennifer Kent, Claire Denis, Sarah Polley, Sofia Coppola, Desiree Akhavan, Catherine Hardwicke, Alma Har’el, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, and Céline Sciamma.

W&H: It’s been a little over a year since the reckoning in Hollywood and the global film industry began. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?

SH: A feeling that it’s a new era and that things will change and lots of discussion about that. This is yet to show up in the numbers, of course, because the gatekeepers have done a good job of powerfully building an indie film world of incredibly talented men and ignoring gender diversity — and ahem, all diversity — so the change will take time.

Sadly, there’s also been an increased push back against [change] too, a feeling that it’s time to move on from the moment without a huge amount of meaningful change.