Martin Scorsese, Golden Bear in Berlin, will leave directing to dedicate himself to acting

While he will return to acting with a role for the film In the hands of Danteby director Julian Schnabel, Martin Scorsese, one of the most influential directors in the world, argued at the Berlinale, which awarded him the honorary Golden Bear this year, for having lost the fear of technology and put it at the service of “the ‘individual “voice” at the cinema..

According to a report by VarietyMartin Scorsese, Oscar winner for best director with his thriller film The infiltrators In 2007 he will play “an old sage who influences the historical writer and poet Dante Alighieri” as he writes his most memorable work: The divine Comedy.

“Martin Scorsese is extraordinary in the film. “He has a brilliant and important role, you can’t take your eyes off him,” Julian Schnabel told the film magazine while filming one of the scenes of the feature film in Italy, describing the anonymous character played by Scorsese.

In the movie In the hands of Dante The protagonist who will play Dante Alighieri will be Oscar Isaac, remembered for his role in the Dune and in the Marvel series, Knight of the Moon. Gal Gadot, the popular one, will also be there Wonder Woman. The cast is completed by, among others, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Al Pacino, John Malkovich and Louis Cancelmi.

This is not the first time that Martin Scorsese has acted in cinema. Previously he had been involved in many of his films with small and occasional roles. Likewise, he appeared in the film dreamsby director Akira Kurosawa in 1990, and voiced a puffer fish in the well-remembered animated film The shark scares in 2004.

“Technology changes so rapidly that the only thing you can hold on to is the individual voice, and that voice can be expressed equally on TikTok, in a four-hour movie or in a miniseries,” said the director of titles such as Taxi driver (1975), Wild bull (1980) or The Moon Assassinsfor which he is competing for the Oscar as best director.

“I don’t think cinema is dying, cinema is transforming,” he continued. “Let’s not be scared by technology, let’s not become its slaves, let’s control it and put it in the right direction, at the service of the individual voice”, she asked amidst applause in a packed room.

Scorsese received the Golden Bear of Honor in a ceremony after which it was screened The infiltrators (2006), film with Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson, for which he received the Oscar for best film after nine nominations.

This year it received ten Oscar nominations, which will be awarded on March 10, for The Moon Assassinsincluding Best Film and Best Director.

In a press conference in which every journalist took advantage of their speech to express their profound admiration for the filmmaker and one even asked permission to represent a scene from the film The infiltrators (and he did), Scorsese clarified what, in his opinion, the role of film festivals is.

“Pay attention to these new individual and artistic voices,” he insisted. “You can watch a movie once and remember it for a lifetime, and I don’t say remember it in a nostalgic sense, but it has an effect on the way you view life, others and your behavior,” she said.

He spoke about the film preservation work he carries out at the Film Foundation and recalled that it is a passion that dates back to his beginnings, when together with Brian de Palma, Steven Spielberg and Paul Schrader, the group he grew up with, they advised each other each other’s films and it was often difficult to find copies.

And even if on this occasion he was the winner and it was about talking about his cinema and what influenced others, he assured that he will never think about it.

“Maybe when you are younger, with more ego and ambition, you lose not your ambition, but your ego… maybe not even, even if you try,” he said with his characteristic speed and sense of humor when speaking .

“The more people tell me these things, the more I reject them,” he said, because it’s about trying to start from scratch for each film. “Freeing yourself from the constraints of what something should be is great, because your biggest problem is yourself.”

As for the role of critics, he believes that it can still be relevant to orient young people in times when all the cinema in the world is at their fingertips. “What is fashionable dies in a day, we need to instill stronger values,” she said.

And regarding his recent meeting with the Pope in the Vatican, he revealed that the relationship was established afterwards Silence (2016), his film about two Jesuit priests in Japan in the 17th century, which Pope Francis saw in the Vatican.

“We talked about new ways of approaching Christianity, which is a topic that interests me,” said Scorsese, who declined to give many details about his next film project based on the life of Jesus Christ.

“It’s an idea that’s always been there, I’m interested in Catholicism,” he said, “but I’m still thinking about what kind of film I want to make, it will be something unique and different, challenging and also fun.” .”

The 74th Berlinale also hosts the world premiere of ‘Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger’, a documentary directed by David Hinton and produced and narrated by Scorsese for the BBC, in the style of his legendary series on 1990s American cinema 50. ’90.

Scorsese retraces title by title, focusing on the most significant scenes, the films of Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988) which he discovered as a child and which marked his way of seeing and making cinema, from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp TO black narcissus AND The red sneakers.