Is the Brazilian film industry a small, tight-knit community?
Santoro: It used to be when I started. The film industry in Brazil started to pick up a couple of years ago. It was pretty bad for a long time, and then around eight years ago, Walter Salles’s Central Station was one of the films that really helped. At that time there were very few directors, but now it’s incredible how the production has increased and how people are just doing it, especially with digital. You’ve got a P2 camera, boom, you make a movie. MPM: There’s been a lot of press that has grouped everything of Latin origin together – Brazil, Argentina, Mexico – and which therefore lumps all recently successful filmmakers into one group. Santoro:Yeah, “The Latin America Cake.” Cuarón, Salles and (Guillermo) Del Toro all know each other, of course. They travel, they meet at festivals. But I’m not a big fan of generalizing things, especially when you’re talking about film and art! Last year, I did a movie about the Cuban Revolution. [Steven] Soderbergh, an American, directed. We had
