Walter Salles Quotes


"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Fiction, Open, Windows)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: American, Brazil, Laws, Now, Vice)

"When I come to London, I always like to see what's playing at the NFT."
- Walter Salles
(Related: London)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: America)

"There are still 500,000 persons afflicted with leprosy in Latin America, so it is still very much present."
- Walter Salles
(Related: America, Present)

"The Sundance Institute has been vital to the film communities of Latin America."
- Walter Salles
(Related: America, Film)

"The Peruvian faces are completely different from that faces in Argentina and in Brazil."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil, Faces)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Act, Problems)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Time, Direction, Freedom)

"So when I was very young, I longed for Brazil."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil)

"So the search for a father in Central Station is also a search for a country."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Father, Country)

"So I feel a responsibility to help first-time film-makers in Brazil, but also to increase the dialogue between film cultures which are really wonderful and so much closer to us than what we do see on our screens."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil, Film, First, Help, Responsibility)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Country, Culture, Identity)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Experience, Diaries, Want)

"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."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Development, Beginning, Film, Freedom, Necessity, Will)

"But I also think that the more you reason collectively about what the project should be at the beginning of the process, the more you can improvise later."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Beginning, Project, Reason)

"On the contrary, I'm a strong believer in the necessity of imperfection coming into the film."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Film, Imperfection, Necessity)

"I come from Brazil, which is a Portuguese speaking part of the continent."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil)

"I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Fiction, Years)

"I went to Cuba maybe eight or nine times."
- Walter Salles
"I'm much more interested in living specific experiences in films."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Living)

"It was a complex endeavor so without Robert Redford's constant support we wouldn't have gotten to the end."
- Walter Salles
(Related: End, Support)

"My father was a diplomat for part of his life and I jumped from country to country and culture to culture."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Life, Father, Country, Culture)

"No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil, Television)

"And my generation in Brazil was influenced by Cinema Novo. So we're echoing what's been done way in the past."
- Walter Salles
(Related: Brazil, Cinema, Past)