3. Walking The Red Road

Arnold's first stab at making a full-length film was helped along by, of all people, Lars Von Trier.

The director instigated an idea called Advance Party, in which three new directors would be given a specific set of rules and some pre-established characters, and told to go and make a movie with them.

"I've been an admirer of his for the longest time so it was great to meet him. It was very brief – no more than 10 minutes in a meeting room at Zentropa, his film company.

"He said this one thing about 'loving the rope' to all of us who were going on this Advance Party journey; he was encouraging us to embrace the limitations set out for us as it would help us to be creative.

"It made total sense and it was wise advice. I did just that, and the more I stuck to the rules, the more interesting the process became."

The result was Red Road, a dark-hued thriller about a woman mourning the loss of her husband and child, who works a bank of CCTV cameras.

When someone inextricably tied to her past wanders into view one day, she starts to stalk him - with traumatic results.

The only film of the three Advance Party films to see the light of a projector to date, Red Road scored  BAFTA awards and the Jury Prize at Cannes 2006.

So, how would she follow that?

Next: Diving into Fish Tank