-When you plan the realization of a film project, what are your objectives?

First of all, getting a film made and sold to distribution is the business objective.  Creatively the objective is to make the best film possible.  While sometimes those two objectives can be difficult to accomplish and can even be at odds with each other, I try my best to accomplish both with creative sources of financing to support the creative process and the business needs.  (I’d reveal my sources of financing but then they may not be as available to me.  So that’s my proprietary info.)

-With Artificial Intelligence, cinema is undergoing a phase of transformation even more radical than the one that occurred in the 1920s with the transition from silent films to sound. What is your opinion on this?

I am very concerned how AI would be used to interfere with the creative process and the studios’ attempt to replace creative people.  I cannot believe that any machine will have a soul and it is the artists’ creativity that is the soul of the artist on display.  Also it creates a whole new conversation around IP and copyright law.  Do we have a right to our own images, voices and unique talents?  I would say that legislation needs to be written worldwide to protect all artists.  This ultimately protects independent producers because if studios can reproduce talent, then they won’t need many producers or any at all to make their AI generated films.
While AI could be very useful for workflow, mundane post issues such as QC, translations, closed captions and subtitles, it is not perfect and it still requires a human to check the work because AI cannot understand nuance.  Again, it is soulless.  Creativity comes from the soul.

-To which production or distribution company would you like to propose your new project? Give us a profile, including some examples.

The old mode of making films by bringing them to the studios is over.  Unless you’re a star with a script they want, or IP they want to remake, you have to package a deal. Doing that without outside financing is almost impossible.  So I have dedicated my time to finding that financing so I can put together an attractive package to attract actors and eventually distributors.  I will propose my package to all the distributors because the right one is the one that makes the best deal.  Everything else is just a wish list.  I am not going to muse on how studios should be more artist friendly because as long as they have shareholders and stock prices, that’s just as useful as wishing to win the lottery without even buying a ticket. Vulture Capitalism, particularly in the US, precludes that kind of thinking.  While I remind people it is called “the movie business”. and not “the movie art”, it is both an artform and a business.  The studios only respond to star power, IP brands with a track record or the new hot trend because they need to justify their investment to a board who is often hostile to artists and doesn’t understand what their value is.  
I am also not opposed to making the film without a distributor if I can mitigate the risk to the investors to less than 20% of the budget.  Then the festival circuit and/or showing the finished film can be the most useful tool in today’s climate, but that requires an appetite for risk that most filmmakers and investors don’t have.  There is nothing more satisfying than making a film no studio wanted to buy and then having a bidding war for it when it is finished.  It is the dream of every indie filmmaker.  
The challenge is after the big sale to figure out how to keep the artistic integrity in a system that doesn’t value it until it succeeds and is proven on each and every project.  But, if it were easy, everyone would succeed.  I didn’t get into this business because it was easy.  I got into precisely because the journey of working at, overcoming and succeeding at this monumental artistic and business challenge is one of the greatest sources of accomplishment and joy I have had and I continue to have each day.

-WILD FILMMAKER can now “sit at the table with the big players” alongside The Hollywood Reporter and Variety during the Cannes Film Festival, but we have chosen to continue being a Global Cultural
Movement with an ethical mission: to bring democracy into cinema, placing the Work of Art at the center of our project rather than Marketing. Do you think we are doing a good job?

Why do you have to choose between the two? They are not mutually exclusive.  Access to the top level by Wild Filmmaker does not have to mean lack of access to the Global Cultural Movement.  In fact, you may have more impact by finding a way to include the big players at the table while you pursue your. mission.  I have never understood anyone who eschews the top levels of Hollywood as some sort of badge of honor.  I grew up with a father who managed to do both, and he was one guy.  Surely a Global Cultural Movement could do the same. You picked my film, MY FATHER MOVES MOUNTAINS,  as one of the best, the winner of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez prize for a reason, and it is making inroads at the highest levels and with the Global audience, so I refuse to believe it is one or the other.  My film also won the 2024 Silver Anthem Award for Human and Civil Rights.  Jon Stewart and The Daily Show on Comedy Central won for TV.  That is proof that you can be both independent, compete with the establishment, sit at the table with the big power brokers and still advocate for the Global film community.  Perhaps you need me on your board.