I think there's so much talent in Latin America - you know, directors from Mexico and Chile and Colombia - we have so much talent and there are not enough platforms to show our talents, so I'd love to use this and start creating my own endeavors and get all these really talented people together.
"Embrace Of The Serpent" has been a big deal for Colombians outside the Amazon. It's been showing continuously there for more than three months. And the Oscar nomination, the film's producer says Colombians are comparing it to having the national team in the World Cup.
A song like 'Osito Carpintero' came straight from the Pedro Infante films, movies that all the kids in Mexico watched.
I started in movies in Mexico and started doing telenovelas in Mexico. 'American Family' was the first thing I did in English.
And my generation in Brazil was influenced by Cinema Novo. So we're echoing what's been done way in the past.
And Walker was made with a Mexican crew, although it was shot in Nicaragua.
I finally, you know, moved to Mexico City, where the film industry is. I started working there as a producer, which is a very, very valid thing for women to do, because we always produce for men, right?
I have a real thing for Mexican directors. And I love Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.
People still say to me, 'What, you still live in Mexico?' I don't have to go to the United States simply to find work, and I don't have to stop what I'm doing. I mean, which Hollywood film beats 'The Motorcycle Diaries?'
What we have in Mexico and Latin America is a wide diversity of voices, but in Mexico, for example, we haven't been able to get a lot of the movies into theaters.
In Chile they have no movies. They have awful popular movies. I am not a Latin American creator.
I asked the producers when I was doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' if they could give me a VHS recording of the film that I could show to my family, because in Mexico and Latin America, when you do a film, you don't expect anybody to see it, especially not in the cinema.
Doing films in Latin America is like an act of faith. I mean, you really have to believe in what you're doing because if not, you feel like it's a waste of time because you might as well be doing something that at least pays you the rent.
The Sundance Institute has been vital to the film communities of Latin America.
There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.
I've done about 15 movies and four television series in Mexico. My last two movies were the highest grossing in Mexican-cinema history - 'Nosotros los Nobles' and 'Instructions Not Included.'
I think the three Mexican directors - Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro - gave all of us foreign, and particularly Latino, directors a big break.
