‘Latino cinematography will once again experience its moment in Hollywood’

Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro celebrates that new generations are putting “minorities” at the center of American fiction and, given the rise of other cinemas such as African-American or Asian, he is clear that “Latin Americans will have their moment again in Hollywood.”

Del Toro will receive the award this Saturday Platinum of Honor 2023 in Madrid in an interview with EFE, he said that although “there are still problems with stereotypes” for minorities, including Latin Americans, things “have changed a little in the United States.”

“If you’re Latin American, that’s fine, why don’t you play a Latin American? The point is that you look for complexity in these characters, which is sometimes possible, but not sometimes,” analyzes Del Toro, who with this Iberoamericana awards industry joins the interpreters such as Edward James OlmosAntonio Banderas or Carmen Maura.

Who played key characters in fiction in modern Latin American history like Che Guevara or the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar also alludes to the fact that breaking these vicious circles does not depend only on actors.

“It depends on who you work with because cinema is not created by itself, it is not made only by an actor the one who makes the decisions, it’s group work where you have to cooperate a lot, I think maybe in the United States things have changed, the new generations perfect them“, he believes.

An award that respects its roots

Translator, winner of awards such as Oscar, Golden Globe, BaftaSilver Bear in Berlin or Palme d’Or in Cannes, claims that he feels very “honored” to receive this award from the Ibero-American industry.

“It’s really an honor to be a part of it and to be recognized for my roots,” says the Puerto Rican, who developed his career in the United States but has also worked with directors such as the Mexican Alexander Gonzalez Iñárritu or the Spaniards Bigas Luna and Fernando León de Aranoa.

In this sense, he defends that it is not so important where the actor works as long as he “searches for the truth” of the stories he interprets.

“It’s not important to do it inside Hollywood, Spain or Mexicoalthough it is true that sometimes Latin or European cinema is more similar to American independent cinema,” he says.

The cinema where he “forged”: “When I started, there was a wave of independent cinema with Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez… I had that opportunity and there, in independent cinema, one becomes purer.”

Thus he explains that Hollywood cinema “is not because it is more enjoyable because it has a bigger budget”, but because it can have “more time” to shoot.

“In Latin cinema, time is more limited, it’s more on the fly, but what you have to do is to search for the truth of the story, the character, and that’s equally difficult on both sides,” he says.

The constant pace of Ibero-American cinema

Puerto Ricans watch a lot of Ibero-American cinema, “though not all,” contemporary and old, and with that knowledge appreciate the fact that there are films that “mark a moment or an era” even years after they were released.

“Ibero-American cinema continues to be created and as long as it continues to be created… I think that now there are more opportunities, more opportunities and that there is more cinema as such than when I started,” he says.

As for the social cinema that is made in the region and that produces good international results, he believes that it “has been on the rise for some time.”

Fan of Oliver Stone and a political film what this American director “manages to do inside Hollywood” despite the fact that the industry “doesn’t want it”, calls for “freedom of expression” for all tapes because “there are always two sides to every story”.

Del Toro, at the age of 56, is the tenth actor to receive the award Platinum honors and although he has worked with the most popular film directors, he is still hungry for new challenges.

“I would like to work in Spain, I’ve never worked with Almodóvar, and I’d like to, I haven’t worked with Scorsese…”, enumerates this actor who gave up his law degree for “something wonderful”: “To stand in front of the audience and make them feel something. “.