00:00Mr. Vendors, thank you so much. We spoke to you in Lyon when you won the Prix Lumière last year,
00:05and this year you're receiving the European Lifetime Achievement Award.
00:08What does this award mean to you?
00:10This is quite special because it's for my family. I've been involved with the European
00:18Film Academy since its beginning for all its 36 years and 24 years as their president, so
00:25I feel it's family. Normally, you don't get an award from your family. They just pat you on
00:32the shoulder and say, well done, boy, and then they go. So it's very special for me.
00:37Wonderful. And yes, as president, if I remember from 1996 to 2020,
00:43you're ideally placed to have contributed but also seen the evolution of European cinema over
00:49the years. Do you think it's evolving in the right way?
00:53We were evolving nicely. And then the pandemic happened and that threw a bone into the system
01:06because it diverted a whole lot of people away from theaters and from movies to streaming.
01:15And they grew much more and faster than they ever expected. And I mean, it was almost inevitable
01:22that audiences were slowly going over to streaming services, but this happened abruptly.
01:30And it was a pretty hard blow to independent and smaller kinds of cinemas than the big
01:37blockbusters. They survived a little better.
01:40To talk about something a little bit more joyous, one of the things that has moved me enormously
01:44throughout your career is your use of music in film. Are there any specific artists that
01:49have moved you the most or that you are listening to even right now that are moving you?
01:57Well, right now I try to listen to people who make music now. And there are some great people,
02:04a lot of women making amazing music, singers, songwriters. I think women right now have the
02:10edge there. But I do listen to some of my old heroes and some of them have really
02:15pulled me through every of my own crisis. And I think I want to mention especially Lou Reed right
02:21here, because, I mean, he's gone now for a number of years and I miss him very much.
02:26But his music is still very much alive and still with an acute sense of the now and here,
02:33even if he's gone. It reminds me in Perfect Days when especially with the use of that song,
02:40but also at the end, I think it's one of the most moving endings I've seen in a very long time
02:44with Nina Simone at the end. Not a single word is spoken, but everything is said in that last
02:49scene. Because Nina says the words of the song and she is what the song she says and she wrote
02:56what the song is all about. And I made sure that my actor, Koji Okushi, knew every word of the song.
03:04And you see it on his face that he understands what she's singing about. And what she's singing
03:11about is like the real credo of his life. The moment counts and the little things and the
03:19awareness of being alive. And it is a film about appreciating, like you said, those little things
03:25in life. And there's the concept of Komorebi, if I'm not mistaken, like the sunlight leaping
03:30through the trees. And it's something that stuck with me ever since I saw the film in Cannes and
03:34rewatched it. And just thinking that would be something that the world needs a lot more of right
03:41now. It's true, those people who took it, took the film and realized that some of the small things
03:48make these men very happy. They tried it out and it resulted in much more happiness in their own
03:54lives. I know lots of people who now leave the house in the morning and look up at the sky first
04:00with a smile. And they say it's a tremendous effect. And seeing the Komorebis that play this
04:07beautiful little spectacle that you see on the wall, on the floor, the sun and the leaves and
04:13the wind produce it, it's for free. And not many people see it, but learning to see it makes your
04:23life much richer. I was wondering, do you recall the film that sparked your joy for cinema?
04:32One of them was 2001. I was still not a filmmaker. One of the greatest pleasures of my life was to
04:39see Vertigo for the first time. And that has remained a hero film for me. But then I should
04:46mention the films of my master Yasujiro Ozu. I got to see him pretty late in life because
04:54he wasn't available neither in America nor in Europe because the Japanese didn't export his
05:00films because they thought he was too Japanese. But once I saw them, I was blown away. And that
05:06was like the lost paradise of filmmaking. So I love each and every one of his films.
05:11It's like one big work, all his 50 films. And finally, what are your ambitions and
05:19hopes for 2025 and the future? Well, I don't have personal hopes.
05:24I mean, this planet is suffering tremendously and we suffer from
05:33all of it going the wrong direction. I mean, in terms of the climate, it's going badly in
05:40the same direction, in the same old direction, which is the wrong direction. And in terms of
05:46politics, old ideas come up that already didn't work when they were applied before. Nationalism
05:54is, I thought was on the way out, but it's coming back big way. So I mean, now if every nation is
06:00now going to say me first, it's not going to go anywhere. So the idea of Europe is a much
06:07more beautiful idea. And so I think we can keep the idea of Europe going and
06:14defend it against all these nationalist attacks. Mr. Lenders, thank you so much for your time.
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