“A musician must listen to others, and listen to himself. » Walter Salles says he repeated this phrase from jazzman Duke Ellington over and over again when he decided to abandon his film project about a crook posing as a member of the Rockefeller family. The Brazilian filmmaker then embarked on two otherwise intimate projects. A miniseries on one of his most illustrious compatriots, the doctor and footballer Socrates (1954-2011), currently being edited. And I’m still herethe adaptation of the book by Marcelo Paiva on the disappearance of his father, the engineer and former left-wing deputy Rubens Paiva (1929-1971), under the military dictatorship. A phenomenal success in Brazil, collecting awards since its presentation in Venice in September 2024, the film is among the favorites for the Oscars. Solicited from all sides, the 68-year-old director was reduced, during our interview in Paris, at the end of December, to answering us with a banana in his hand, just to regain some strength.
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-” I am always Does it draw on your personal history?
In my youth, I knew the Paiva family. The idea of recounting its exceptional destiny had been on my mind for a long time. I’m still hereMarcelo’s story about the kidnapping of his father Rubens, published in 2015, served as a trigger. I met the Paivas in 1969, in Rio de Janeiro, I was 13 years old. At the time of the military coup of 1964, Rubens had gone into exile in Europe, my father [le diplomate et banquier Walther Moreira Salles] also, we followed him to France with my mother and my brothers. When I returned, I did not recognize my country. I had left a democracy, I found a dictatorship. I shared this feeling of not belonging with the Paivas. They lived in Leblon, ten minutes from my house, we spent our weekends together.
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