Introduced by Walter Salles Central Station

“One of the 100 Best Films of World Cinema.”——Empire magazine

It'’s a tremendous honor to be able to welcome Academy Award-nominated Walter Salles, the most internationally prominent Brazilian director working today, to the Wexner Center as part of our multiyear Via Brasil project.

In addition to such transnational projects as The Motorcycle Diaries ( 2004) and On the Road (2012), Salles consistently returns to Brazil to make films exploring that country’s unique culture and mix of people. Central Station, his breakthrough film, remains one of the most popular and influential Brazilian movies of recent decades (along with City of God, which Salles produced) and was nominated for two Oscars (Best Foreign Film and Best Actress). Veteran actress Fernanda Montenegro gives the performance of her career as Dora, a cynical retired schoolteacher who makes a living by writing letters for illiterate customers at a Rio de Janeiro train station.

Circumstances lead her to take responsibility for a poor nine-year-old boy searching for his father. The two travel to the rural northeast of Brazil on a quest to find his father’s home. Salles has developed a reputation as one of the finest contemporary “road movie” filmmakers, and you’ll understand why after watching this emotionally powerful film. (111 mins., 35mm)

Get ready for Salles’s visit by seeing his interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road (produced by Francis Ford Coppola) in a special free member-only preview screening on November 13.