Each year, Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see last year’s question and responses, click here.) We also send out cinematographer, editor and first-time producer questionnaires.

This year’s question:

Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively?

Below, find links to each director’s individual response to the prompt. Keep checking back here during the festival, as more responses will be posted daily!

“It Was an Interesting Challenge to Take a Real Place and Mold It” | Josh Margolin, Thelma

“It’s Surprisingly Difficult to Find a Closet That is Spacious Enough” | Caroline Lindy, Your Monster

“We Imagined the Queer London of Our Dreams” | Amrou Al-Kadhi, Layla

“I Knew Right Then the Filmmaking Gods Were Looking Down on Us” | Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap

“Malia Will Now Always Be the Right Location for the Film” | Molly Manning Walker, How to Have Sex

“This Field Beneath the Field Kept Showing Up in My Dreams” | Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow

“Can Someone Who Uses a Wheelchair Access this Location?” | Amber Sealey, Out of My Mind

“We Were Very Fortunate to Be Allowed to Shoot There” | Astrid Rondero & Fernanda Valadez, Sujo

“We Tried to Look Behind All These Fantasies and Projections” | Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, Agent of Happiness

“It Was All About Hanging On For Dear Life” | Ondi Timoner, Dig! XX

“A Section of the LA River Which Is Often Overlooked” | Jack Begert, Little Death

“The Biggest Inspiration for Me Making This Film at All Was Maria’s Blog” | Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, A New Kind of Wilderness

“People Who Have Been Relegated to the Background Finally Stepping Forward” | Kobi Libii, The American Society of Magical Negroes

“We Shot in Wildly Different Landscapes” | Sam and Andy Zuchero, Love Me

“The Gravestones Appear Almost Like Signs” | Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck, Eternal You

“I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon

“My Imagination Was Intimately Connected to the Countryside of My Birth” | Christopher Jenkins, 10 Lives

“The Dichotomy of Worlds Held in This One Place” | Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie, Sugarcane

“The NJ Turnpike as a Symbol of Autonomy” | River Gallo, Ponyboi

“An Unusually High Concentration of Boarding Schools” | Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls

“Finding the Perfect Cottage to Film In” | Megan Park, My Old Ass

“It Doesn’t Need to Make Sense as Long as You Pay a Lot of Money to Film It in NYC” | Aaron Schimberg, A Different Man

“The Feeling of Dealing with Death in a Place That is So Full of Life” | Laura Chinn, Suncoast

“An Opportunity To Show Another Story of Los Angeles” | Sally Aitken, EVERY LITTLE THING

“The Sonic Experience of a Live Basketball Game Is Electrifying” | Sarah Dowland, Sue Bird: In the Clutch

“The Visual Idea of a House Frozen in Time” | Pedro Freire, Malu

“A Town with a Personality as Rich as the Characters” | Alessandra Lacorazza, In the Summers

“The Lower East Side is Effulgent with the Grist of Urban Existence” | Debra Granik, Conbody VS Everybody

“He’s an Articulation of the Environment, an Unforgiving Force of Nature” | Chris Nash, In A Violent Nature

“In New York, You Create Your Own Family” | Lana Wilson, Look Into My Eyes

“The Lush Forest, Throbbing With a Vast Diversity of Life, Emerges as a Character” | Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan, Nocturnes

“The Spectacle of Elections” | Ramona S. Díaz, And So It Begins

“The Nexus of Art, Money and Violence Makes for a Seemingly Inescapable Loop” | J.M. Harper, As We Speak

“A Departure From Narratives of Division” | Iliana Sosa, God Save Texas: La Frontera

“Texas is a Mirror That Reflects Back What America Has Been” | Alexandria Stapleton, God Save Texas: The Price of Oil

“Ninety Percent of Our Film Takes Place In One Location” | Greg Jardin, It’s What’s Inside