How does it feel in America this morning?

I feel like I’m in a nightmare. Yesterday [the day before the election results were announced] I was in New Orleans running at 6.30 in the morning on Bourbon Street, which at that time in the morning smells of vomit and despair, and I was wondering ‘is this what it’s going to feel like on the morning of November 9, like vomit and despair’ – that's what it feels like.

As a woman, and a woman journalist, and a woman who has made this film about gender violence, how do you feel about Trump’s election?

My first reaction was: Bring It. You [Trump] being elected does not excuse you from this behaviour that is both unacceptable and criminal. No person should take this result as ‘it’s ok to do these things’. I am very concerned that the people who are deploying sexual violence in conflict are going to feel enabled by this. And I have very little doubt in my mind that sexual violence in conflict is going to be very low on the list of priorities in the Trump administration.

This is a man who long ago was kicked out of the Republican establishment – he hasn’t been around the quarters of power for a very long time for good reason, and he’s back? Oh my god.

What’s interesting about the Republican campaign is that Donald Trump was almost like the wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls the screen back and he’s not this floating giant head but a man behind a curtain. I remember watching Donald Trump imitating the reporter with a disability and thinking ‘Oh my god. What are people telling their children right now?'

Lots of people like to work for the White House and the president and the allure of what that means isn’t going to go away and remember, bullies love power. Trump has surrounded himself by people who are bullies, by any definition.

What women’s stories do you think will arise from this?

It will be very dangerous to back down from doing the kinds of stories, not just that I did with this film, but also that you’ve seen in the last few months where women have been speaking up and speaking out. Those stories have to keep coming and there’s more urgency than ever. We have to make sure that we in the media continue to cover gender violence, which is about all of humanity. We’re past the point of no return.

As an investigative journalist, you've worked on thousands of tough stories in war-torn countries – why did you choose this life? What motivates you?

I always wanted to be the great American novelist and my dad was like ‘well that’s great but you don’t have a trust fund', so I went into journalism and when I started working for Bill Moyers [former White House press secretary] I started to realise the power of the media and how telling a story visually could really move hearts and minds. You can make an intellectual argument with a film. Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? [Mitchell's first film] was definitely intellectual, it had an emotional resonance. But the leap from that to The Uncondemned was pretty broad. I’d never thought about making films, I just wanted to keep covering stories and writing books. And Haiti: Where Did the Money Go? actually started as a web series and one of my former colleagues said ‘oh you should make a documentary’ and I thought ‘oh how hard can that be?’ It’s very hard! But I didn’t know that and I made it and it won a lot of awards and all of a sudden people were like ‘oh you should make another’. It didn’t even occur to me to do another one until I was in LA in 2012, stuck in traffic on the 405 freeway and I heard this guy who was the GOP candidate for the US Senate in Missouri, Todd Akin, on the radio say that 'a woman couldn’t get pregnant through rape because she has a way to shut down her body.' And I just lost it. I knew I had to tell this story, and I knew it had to be rape and conflict because there is no ambiguity about what that is, no one will ever contest that and if they do they will be laughed at. What kind of story could I do that would move the needle and I thought, well, what if I told a story about what to do about it. And then I found the Akayesu story.