Walter Salles

Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) adapts Jack Kerouac’s cult novel through the Beat Generation’s poetry, drugs and jazz, with Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart and Amy Adams as the young people on the road. The road never ends, and the thrill is not knowing what tomorrow brings. — In the late 1940s, Sal is a young writer who has yet to write anything. Then Dean Moriarty turns up from Denver, an ex-con with a teenage wife, a car and not a cent to his name. Together they set off for the far side of America, fuelled by jazz and drugs, and Sal writes every bit of it down. — Official Selection - International Competition | Cannes Film Festival | 2012

Walter Salles (“I’m Still Here”) won the Golden Bear and a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar, turning the world’s eyes to Brazilian cinema. A bitter retiree who wants only peace and quiet is landed with a child, and the grumpy old woman and the bright boy set off across Brazil. — In the main hall of Rio de Janeiro’s central station, Dora, a retired teacher, sets up her table and writes letters, for a fee, for people who can’t write their own. One day a woman dictates a letter to her young son’s father, and moments later she is killed by a bus. The boy is left alone, and Dora reluctantly sets off with him to find his father. — Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Fernanda Montenegro) | Oscars | 1999 Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film | Oscars | 1999 Golden Bear | Berlin International Film Festival | 1998 Best Actress (Fernanda Montenegro) | Berlin International Film Festival | 1998 Prize of the Ecumenical Jury | Berlin International Film Festival | 1998 Best Film Not in the English Language | BAFTA | 1999 Best Non-English Language Film | Golden Globes | 1999 Audience Award | San Sebastián International Film Festival | 1998 Golden Frog | CAMERIMAGE Film Festival | 1998

One woman’s heroic stand against Brazil’s military dictatorship really happened, and Walter Salles’s film about it won the 2025 Oscar for Best International Feature. Eunice Paiva is played by Fernanda Torres as a younger woman and by Torres’s own mother, Fernanda Montenegro, in later life. — In Rio de Janeiro in December 1970, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman pushed out of politics by the coup, lives near the beach with his wife Eunice and their five children, quietly helping people get out of the country. In January, armed men walk into the house and take him in for questioning. Later they come back for Eunice and her teenage daughter, and Eunice spends twelve days in a cell without anyone telling her where her husband is. Once she is out, she starts fighting for the truth. — Best International Feature Film | Oscars | 2025 Nominated for Best Film | Oscars | 2025 Nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Fernanda Torres) | Oscars | 2025 Best Screenplay | Venice Film Festival | 2024 Best Actress - Drama (Fernanda Torres) | Golden Globes | 2025 Nominated for Best Non-English Language Film | Golden Globes | 2025 Audience Award | Rotterdam International Film Festival | 2025