Paolo Sorrentino has broken with streaming providers, and gone back to traditional movies instead. The Oscar-winning Italian director spoke about this at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Maybe because I’m getting older, but the best thing for me is trying to work on the big screen.”
Sorrentino said on Tuesday of a conversation about the future of cinema attended by Guillermo del Toro, Costa Gavras and others.
Sorrentino, who won an Academy Award in 2014 for her film The Great Beauty, stressed that “the power of image” can only be achieved on screen. The Italian director, as well as other famous filmmakers including Martin Scorsese and Jane Campion, have produced productions for Netflix in recent years. Sky, HBO, and Canal TV co-produced Sorrentino’s series The Young Pope, and his biopic The Hand of God was born on Netflix.
He believed his work in broadcasting was beneficial to the service provider, but he no longer wanted to go that route. He added that he believed the influx of easy money was actually a problem. “For a lot of filmmakers, this has become an overdose of opportunity — a movie series. We’re starting to speed up a lot.” “A good movie takes time. It was a fallacy. It’s important to go back in time,” he said.
Netflix lost its subscribers for the first time in a decade, as it recently had to reduce its staff. Cannes Film Festival organizers previously excluded Netflix and other streaming providers from participating in the festival because their films were not distributed in cinemas.
The 51-year-old director is optimistic about the future of cinemas:
“One day there will come a time when people are tired of watching movies at home.”
Criticizing the broadcast providers, the director also noted that compared to how much money they have, they aren’t investing enough in embracing new voices, young filmmakers. (MTI)
