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.

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.

A filmmaker can never be distant from his roots.

And my generation in Brazil was influenced by Cinema Novo. So we're echoing what's been done way in the past.

I come from Brazil, which is a Portuguese speaking part of the continent.

I did documentaries for maybe 10 years before I turned to fiction films.

I went to Cuba maybe eight or nine times.

I'm much more interested in living specific experiences in films.

It was a complex endeavor so without Robert Redford's constant support we wouldn't have gotten to the end.

My father was a diplomat for part of his life and I jumped from country to country and culture to culture.

No, I worked a lot for European television, doing documentaries in Brazil.

On the contrary, I'm a strong believer in the necessity of imperfection coming into the film.

So the search for a father in Central Station is also a search for a country.

So when I was very young, I longed for Brazil.

The Peruvian faces are completely different from that faces in Argentina and in Brazil.

The Sundance Institute has been vital to the film communities of Latin America.

There are still 500,000 persons afflicted with leprosy in Latin America, so it is still very much present.

When I come to London, I always like to see what's playing at the NFT.

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.

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.