From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. You can also hear this show at KCRW.com.

Choosing your tribe, either family or outside world, and fighting the state loyal to it.

That's the kind of material that attracts writer-director Gavin O'Connor, with films such as his first tumbleweeds to the docu-drama miracle to his newest warrior.

He joins me from KCRW in Santaamonica. I'm in New York.

Gavin, thanks so much for being here.

Thanks for having me, Elvis.

The idea of tribes has always been a big thing for you

and the kind of strain of remaining true to your family

or venturing into the outside world

and finding a family outside that.

What did that come from?

That's a really good question.

I'm not quite sure.

Maybe it's a desire of mind to surround myself with that

or a curiosity to what that's like

because I didn't have that growing up.

I came from a pretty fractured kind of environment where it felt tribe less.

That's a fascinating thing because I just remember when I met you as Sundance of 99, Tumbleweeds.

Just that sort of sense of, you know, the mother fighting to keep hold of her daughter and her daughter being a kind of interesting age as an adolescent,

making that decision as we watch whether to stay in that insular world or deal with the attraction of the outside world.

It goes back to even that.

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