(Paris) Oliver Stone has completed filming a documentary on Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, his incarceration between 2018 and 2019 and his return to power, the filmmaker said in an interview with AFP.
“The documentary addresses the legal proceedings (Editor’s note: which targeted the former Brazilian president from 2011 for acts of corruption and money laundering, among others), what happened when they prison for corruption this president of a prosperous country, which is not really unusual in these countries,” said Stone, visiting Paris on Tuesday to talk about Nuclear Nowa documentary on nuclear defense.
No release date has been announced for the moment, the film must be presented at festivals, said the American director, a regular at high masses on the 7th.e art like the Cannes Film Festival.
Over the course of five decades, Oliver Stone has filmed several works of fiction and documentaries related to Latin America, starting with El Salvador (1986), with James Woods.
Some of his works are controversial, such as Commandera documentary released in 2003 on Fidel Castro, to which he devoted two others, in 2004 and 2012.
In 2014, Stone also directed My Friend Hugoabout former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, produced by the official Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur, which defends the Chavista regime.
Filming the documentary on Lula took months, during which Oliver Stone traveled with the veteran Brazilian politician.
Asked about the similarities between Lula, Chavez and Castro, he sees them as “humanists”. “They are all original and do their best to serve their country,” he believes.
“I think lawsuits are used around the world for political reasons, as a political tool. But the whole world is corrupt. Russia runs on corruption, like Turkey or the United States,” added Oliver Stone, who is also the author of a series of interviews with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“I am a free thinker,” declares the filmmaker, who does not plan to vote for either Trump or Biden in the US elections in November.
With interviews like Putin’s, Stone has built a reputation as an outsider in Hollywood. This has already earned him the label of conspiracy theorist, which he says he does not care about.
Winner of three Oscars, the director of Platoon And JFK admits that a return to feature films seems difficult.