Breaking the Rules with Michel Franco

The cinema of Michel Franco often feels like content under pressure. Whether he is charting a society’s collapse or a family’s disintegration, his films always crackle with pent-up energies ready to detonate. Following the success of 2023’s Memory, the Mexican filmmaker teams up again with Jessica Chastain for his Competition entry Dreams. In this career-spanning chat, Franco opens up about his singular working method, why he insists on shooting chronologically, and the importance of listening to your cast and crew. For while filmmaking remains a dictatorship, he recently told Variety, “that doesn’t mean you don’t collaborate.”