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Mexican auteur Michel Franco has arrived at the Tribeca Festival Lisboa this week with more than his immigration drama Dreams, starring Jessica Chastain, to show off in Lisbon.
He packed a newly-acquired passport for Portugal among his travel documents. “It’s a strange coincidence. I just got a Portuguese passport two months ago. And strangely enough, I’ve never been to Portugal,” Franco tells The Hollywood Reporter ahead of his Mexico-U.S. co-production screening on Oct. 31, followed by a Q&A with the director.
Franco adds he secured a passport for Portugal to potentially shoot future movies across the Atlantic without each time securing proper travel documents and work authorization. “I like shooting films in different places and, who knows, if I end up shooting in Europe at some point, it’s a great opportunity,” Franco explains.
Screening Dreams in Lisbon will also allow a second viewing by Europeans for his ninth movie after it had a world premiere earlier this year in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. The drama has Mexican ballet dancer Isaac Hernández co-starring as an undocumented immigrant who bets his relationship with a wealthy San Francisco philanthropist, played by Chastain, will seal the deal for permanency in the U.S. and global artistic success.
British actor Rupert Friend also stars in the feature Franco shot in San Francisco and Mexico City in 2023, just before the auteur debuted his 2023 drama, Memory, which also starred Chastain alongside Peter Sarsgaard. Memory premiered in Venice after being shot in Brooklyn, New York.
Franco says he and Chastain have discussed other movie projects as the Oscar winner knows she will see something original and get out of her comfort zone when collaborating with the Mexican director.
In Memory, Chastain played a social worker and single mother whose structured life is thrown into chaos when a young man dealing with dementia, played by Peter Sarsgaard, follows her home from their high school reunion.
“The challenge for me is to write something that keeps challenging her in a different way and surprising the audience. We can’t do the same film again,” Franco tells THR. His bent towards original scripts flows from Franco using his own ideas and not books or other major source materials for inspiration.
His films are also low-budget, scrappy productions, which appeals to Chastain. “One of the things she likes a lot is when we’re shooting, we rarely waste time. We’re always working, we’re always shooting, we’re always discussing the next scene, but we don’t talk that much when we’re shooting,” Franco says of his directorial style.
He also shoots his no-fuss movies usually over six or seven weeks. “I don’t believe in making a film in 15 days. I simply don’t do that,” Franco declares.
And he shoots his movies in chronological order. That allowed Chastain to join the director in the edit suite every Saturday during the film’s production, not least to decide what needed to be reshot on locations already secured by Franco.
“This is mainly because I’m the producer and because Jessica is the best partner in crime I could have, and she enables me to do that. And we make money not the central issue. We do what the film requires,” the director adds.
In Memory, Chastain chose to purchase her movie costumes at Target, in part to get into her character. In Dreams, Franco recalls a resourceful Chastain raiding her closet at home for luxury costumes to play a wealthy socialite on set.
And her husband, fashion executive Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, tapped his consumer brand contacts to secure a luxury car for Chastain to drive around San Francisco in while the cameras rolled. “There’s always different solutions that are better than money, if everyone collaborating has such good will,” Franco explains.
The Tribeca Festival Lisboa will run through to Nov. 1 in Lisbon.
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Etan Vlessing
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