Walter Salles is hosting this year's Cinemas du Monde series (see the full story here) We caught up with him just before the Cannes Festival to ask him a few questions: If one of the filmmakers in this year’s lineup were to ask you for a piece of your personal wisdom concerning their career as filmmaker, what would you tell them? Only do a film if the story that you've elected is absolutely essential to you. Define “cinema” in one brief sentence.Cinema is an extraordinary instrument to unveil the world we live in, to better understand "the other", and ultimately, who we are. Is the democratization of filmmaking (thanks to the availability of equipment, etc) necessarily a good thing? Yes, in the sense that digital technology offers the possibility for a larger number of young filmmakers

Good, marketable cinema usually comes from the same continents over and over again. Countries in those continents have support structures that ensure that out of the lot some film school graduates are going to become great filmmakers. The reverse of this seems to be true, too. People desirous of becoming filmmakers but who have the misfortune of being born in countries such as Laos, Nigeria or North Korea and who have

Alba Rorhwacher, an Italian actress whose Audrey Hepburn-like grace matches her exceptional qualities as actress became known to American audiences for playing Tilda Swinton's daughter in "Amore." She will be coming to the Cannes Festival next week to support "Le Meraviglie" ("The wonders," in Italian) a film in which she has the leading role, and which was directed by her sister Alice Rohrwacher. It's the end of summer, a village in the Umbria

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des Cinémas program at the Cannes Festival)

THE PITCH: A young peasantwoman tries to lift herself out of poverty by turning a rich but blind cousin's predicament to her advantage.

Since working as a make-up artist and learning moviemaking on the fly are you now fully settled in your role as filmmaker ? After working so hard and independently on my first film, it's hard to consider myself anything but a filmmaker. Being that Laos has little-to-no cinema scene or support, everything had to be done by myself and my tiny team, around the clock. We didn't have any infrastructure that I could fall back on.

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]

(part of a multi-article series about the 2014 Fabrique des […]