Filmmaker James Redford on his famous father and dyslexia documentary

I grew up in Manhattan, left at 18 and never went back. As an undergraduate I really liked literature and writing; I started out writing short stories. I got a master's degree in literature from Northwestern University (in Illinois), but I lost interest in the academic setting. I hung in there and got the degree because I didn't want to be a quitter, but I knew, even in the midst of it, academia wasn't for me because storytelling wasn't the point, criticism was the point. Then it was a matter of finding out what kind of career I could do if I really like storytelling.

As a college student in 1985, I was at this non-profit called the Sundance Institute, which was having summer retreats for filmmakers at the Sundance Resort, in Utah, which my dad (actor and director Robert Redford) owns. It was a humble affair in the mid-1980s. There was a festival in Utah that was going to be shut down so the institute thought it would be fun to have a little venue and show a couple of movies. The first year it was just one theatre, a banner outside, I think they were giving tickets away. Now, you've got 40,000 people arriving in Park City for the festival. It's become a powerful thing. Over the years I've had a number of projects shown there. It's hard, most people assume if my film is there that it's a matter of nepotism - and if they don't get in then it seems to be an extra stamp of disapproval, right? So you can't win. But, you know, there is a double-blind system to selection.

WATCH Redford talk about dyslexia

I didn't think of screenwriting until I left academia and then I wrote a screenplay out of frustration and found I love the form. The first screenplay was a short piece for a TV show about twins who plan to get out of prison by switching identities - it was terrible but I loved the process. I started writing and writing and, by the 1990s, I was getting jobs as a screenwriter. I came to realise that during the execution of a movie any number of things will alter the script; it won't look like your script, for better or worse. It won't look like your story unless you direct it. So I got into directing and really liked it. My first documentary was driven very much by personal experience.

As a child I had an autoimmune disorder that wiped out my liver. By the time I was 30, I needed a liver transplant; I was dying. I had the harrowing experience of wondering whether or not I would get a transplant in time and waited nine months or so. In 1993, there weren't many people who got transplants. Finally, when I recovered, I was struck by the fact that organ donation was associated with creepy stuff. Think about Frankenstein, he was really your first organ transplant. Transplantation had enormous barriers to overcome early on - it was eerie, scary, connected to death and tragedy. I decided to make a documentary about the people who donate organs. The Kindness of Strangers came out in 1999. That experience was rewarding on a creative level; the idea that you could engage a storytelling craft and push the societal bar forward - or at least feel that you were.