Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco has arrived in the German capital to debut his latest feature, Dreams, in competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.
The film is led by Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain, who joined the prolific filmmaker this afternoon at a presser for the flick. The session was politically-orientated, with most questions directed at Chastain. Early on, the Oscar winner was quizzed on political affairs in her native U.S., and her answer was resolute.
“I make my home in the U.S. because I’m a hopeful person,” Chastain said. “I believe you have to participate to create the environment, culture, and society you want. I’m not going to give up on my country. So yes, I would like to say there’s a lot of us there that are still quite hopeful, and we’re fighting the good fight.”
In Dreams, Chastain stars as wealthy San Francisco socialist and philanthropist Jennifer. When her younger Mexican lover Fernando– a dancer she met through a dance school program run by her family’s foundation in Mexico – turns up at her home in San Francisco after making a perilous illegal journey across the border, their love story gets complicated.
Chastain said the movie’s subject renders the film “undeniably political” through its exploration of the relationship between the United States of America and Mexico.
The film is Chastain’s second collaboration with Franco following 2023’s Memory. The actor said she responds to Michel’s work “because he provokes and delves into issues that a lot of filmmakers wouldn’t want to explore.”
“He doesn’t say what’s right and wrong, but what he does is provoke thought and discussion,” Chastain said.
Chastain later praised the female characters in Franco’s films, describing them as challenging and more realistic than much of the work traditionally given to women on screen.
“The first way you erase someone’s humanity is to erase their missteps and their mistakes. For years, I’ve advocated for complex female roles, especially in the United States where female characters were just supporting, almost like martyrs or saints,” Chastain said.
“I’ve made it my desire to play characters who make a lot of mistakes and missteps. I don’t care if they’re likable or palatable, but I want people to talk about them. And I want it to feel real and human. We’re all capable of many things, great, healthy, wonderful, beautiful thing, as well as horrible destructive behavior.”
Celebrated Mexican ballerina Isaac Hernández, who is currently a principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre, co-stars opposite Chastain as Fernando. Hernández was at this afternoon’s presser alongside Chastain and Rupert Friend who rounds out the cast with Marshall Bell and Eligio Meléndez. Producers are Franco, Eréndira Núñez Larios, and Alexander Rodnyansky. The Match Factory is handling sales.
When quizzed on where she currently sees her career as a Hollywood actor, Chastain said she has cemented a certain level of freedom aided by her work with diretors like Franco.
“Working with filmmakers like Michel and working on films with such low budgets that aren’t being directed by a committee, there’s more freedom,” she said. “I live in New York, I work with the artists that I want to work with. I feel excited to go to work. I feel really happy to be in the industry, and I’m not called to do something that doesn’t excite me. I feel like I can actually not do six films a year now if I don’t want to. I just work when I want to.”
Elsewhere in the session Chastain praised this year’s crop of awards season films and encouraged all watching to seek out Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of A Sacred Fig.
“It’s a genius film, and it’s not getting enough attention,” she said. “Everyone should watch this film.”
Dreams screens this evening in Berlin.
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