Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottomis an English filmmaker. He began his career working in British television before moving into features. Three of his films — Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland and 24 Hour Party People — have been nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Winterbottom often works with the same actors; many faces can be seen in several of his films, including Shirley Henderson, Paul Popplewell, John Simm, Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Raymond Waring and Kieran O'Brien...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth29 March 1961
We are trying to show what happened to them from their point of view. In the end we are just trying to tell the story as it is. To tell the story of these three people, not to tell the general story.
The starting point was to tell (about) these three people, not to tell the general political situation. All the images you see - it's hard to know whether it's deliberate or not, they sort of dehumanize the people there, you don't have any sense of what they're like.
There's really only three people that should get any prize because of this film and that's the three people whose story it was.
It's a great honor. There are really three people who deserve to get this prize. And they are the three people who lived through this.
If you do a story about a British journalist rescuing a child from Sarajevo, then Sarajevo just becomes an exotic location, and the story's about this British journalist.
A lot of the aspects of the world of the film are amalgams of things that already exist.
I still enjoy watching films more than making them.
If you make a film set in London or in Pakistan or wherever, the thing that interests me is the relationships between individuals - individuals and society, individuals and their family, their girlfriend or boyfriend, it's all the same idea.
I don't particularly like the idea that there's an arc to the story and that therefore in this scene you have to convey this bit of information or emotion. I like more the feeling that, of course, there is a shape to the story, but that each scene should feel right, should be true at that moment, and that gradually you accumulate these moments of truth until you get enough of them together that it becomes a story that's interesting.
I think it would be impossible if you had a name like mine not to get a little flack for it.
There's still a 1950s view of cinema, that there's one audience and they all want to see the same thing.
I prefer to take actors and put them in real settings and real locations and real situations rather than create artificial locations that serve the characters. It's just much easier when you are walking down the street with your actors to do that in a real street that's still open with people on it, rather than to close it off and bring in extras.
When you start being enthusiastic about whatever it is you like, that is the golden age for you.
I'm a fan of music from all over the world.