Yesterday at the Filmmaker Lodge, writer-director Martin McDonagh, whose debut feature In Bruges kicked off the Festival, preached a quiet but intense sermon to those who attended Film Church, the Festival’s annual non-denominational forum for lessons in cinema.

“Every piece of work should be true to itself and shouldn’t be the first step in moving to Hollywood or getting a three-picture deal,” he said, adding that his own goal has always been “exploring a truth even if it’s dark and dangerous or upsetting to you or to other people.”

The idea for In Bruges was born when the Irish artist visited the titular Belgian town by train. On the first day, he was struck by its Medieval storybook beauty, but soon he found himself “just bored shitless,” he confessed. An argument began in his head between these two conflicting responses, and thus the dialogue was born between the characters of Ray and Ken, the hit men played in the movie by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. “Travel, I think, is one of the greatest things for a writer,” said McDonagh. “And being alone.”

One of the truths that McDonagh unveils in his cinematic subversion of the classic hit man flick is the dilemma of violence in film. “Almost every single film poster you see has a gun,” he said. “Mine does, too. But I think that’s problematic, and that’s one of the things I wanted to explore.”

While some filmmakers take the audience’s reaction into consideration as they write each and every line, McDonagh is the exact opposite. In a sense, he doesn’t even lend much weight to his own point of view when creating his often politically incorrect characters. “I mean, I’ve never tried to offend anybody in any of my works, but I think you’ve just got to be true to the character you’re writing, not necessarily to yourself or to your own political sensibility,” he said. The character of Ray in In Bruges is a racist hit man, for example. “I wouldn’t agree with a word that Ray says in this film, basically, but I think it’s interesting to explore an opinion or a sensibility different from your own,” McDonagh said. McDonagh, in contrast, proclaimed himself “anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and pro-midget” and received a spontaneous round of laughter and applause from the “congregation.”

Writing is a fairly solo process for McDonagh, and it continues to be even once he arrives on set and lends his words to the mouths of actors. “I’m really arrogant as a writer,” he admitted. “I’m with the script for two years and honing every word until they’re all in place. I’m always open to an actor coming up with something else, but it had better be bloody good.” McDonagh has earned the right to be confident: He won an Academy Award for his short film Six Shooter and, before that, his acclaimed plays garnered two Olivier Awards, four Tony nominations, and a place on the contemporary literature syllabi of some of the most prestigious universities in the world.

In almost every area of creative production besides writing, McDonagh is a firm believer in delegation. He found it relieving to discover that he didn’t have to know everything about other people’s jobs on set and that he could rely on the talents of his crew. “I still don’t know what a lens is,” he joked. He also admitted that when he writes, he hears his screenplays as opposed to seeing them, so he worked extensively with the storyboard artist to conceive nearly every frame of the moody, atmospheric film.

But even though he loves the collaborative nature of directing, he still considers himself a writer first and foremost. “‘Director’ – it sounds like something you’d say to a girl in a bar to get her to go to bed with you,” he said. “Whereas ‘I’m a writer’ is something you’d say to a girl to get her to leave you alone.” And as for working in Hollywood, the first and last commandment of McDonagh’s Film Church is to protect and defend the screenplay in the face of screenwriters’ traditionally low status. “I had no notes on the script and I don’t think I would have read them if I had,” he said. “As a writer, you’ve got to be strong about those sorts of things. I think one of my jobs as a writer is to not let myself be screwed.”