Also, there are now new laws in Brazil which create incentives for Argentine and Latin American films to be premiered and distributed in Brazil and vice versa. |
On the contrary, I'm a strong believer in the necessity of imperfection coming into the film. |
It was a complex endeavor so without Robert Redford's constant support we wouldn't have gotten to the end. |
No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil. |
So when I was very young, I longed for Brazil. |
A filmmaker can never be distant from his roots. |
The necessity to conceptualise has to come very early on, and defining a vector of development for that film also at the beginning of the process will allow you much more freedom as you go along. |
The films that I've done before were original stories most of the time, I did two adaptations before this, but they were mostly original stories where I had complete freedom to evolve in the direction I wanted. |
I come from Brazil, which is a Portuguese speaking part of the continent. |
The Sundance Institute has been vital to the film communities of Latin America. |
So the search for a father in Central Station is also a search for a country. |
And my generation in Brazil was influenced by Cinema Novo. So we're echoing what's been done way in the past. |
The other aspect is that you become much more aware of the structural problems that pertain to that continent. You feel the need to act to try and solve them. |
I went to Cuba maybe eight or nine times. |
Also, I knew that the impact of Motorcycle Diaries was going to be so resonant for all of us who went through the experience of making it that I didn't want to do anything that could reflect it. |
There are still 500,000 persons afflicted with leprosy in Latin America, so it is still very much present. |
When I come to London, I always like to see what's playing at the NFT. |
I come from a country and also a continent whose identity is in the making. We're a very young culture, and I think that things are not yet crystallised. |
We all knew the book well because it's the cult book in Latin America. For me, this was a sacred territory. I would not have ventured into it by myself. |
That's why I have always admired documentaries, because they open windows that can make you understand much better where you come from, much better than fiction, I think. |