Anton Corbijn returns and GIFF welcomes him in style

In this third Red Carpet event presented in Guanajuato City within the Guanajuato International Film Festival (where many of this year’s participants, including the Series Lab panelists, were present) the most recent film by last year’s honoree Anton Corbijn was presented in the Juárez Theater, where last year he introduced Mexico to A Most Wanted Man. He found that experience so gratifying he wanted to come back for more.

To begin the presentation, hosts Laura de Ita and Leonardo Ortizgris came out to introduce the filmmaker. After briefly recounting his career as a photographer and filmmaker, they invited him up on stage. Once on stage, Anton Corbijn said he was listening to everything our hosts were saying and understood a few things, so he supposes they were talking about him. Corbijn briefly introduced his film, saying it’s something different for him, something lighter and a story he was attracted to because of his experience in photography. He stated clearly that the film is not a biopic of James Dean and if anyone went in expecting a James Dean biopic, they should probably leave.

Affirmatively, the film is not about the life of James Dean, but about a very specific time in his life in which he was already acting, but wasn’t really famous yet (of course, he was mostly famous after his Death). The film is about Dennis Stock (played by Robert Pattinson whose days as a vampire are well behind him), an independent photographer who was invited to a party held by director Nicholas Ray and there he met the young actor (played by Dane Dehaan, a young actor everyone should follow), hiding from all the attention. The film is about the friendship between these two young men which leads to the famous photograph that turned this figure into an icon. The two central performances stand out (particularly Dehaan, finding something deeper in the James Dean mannerisms we’re all familiar with) and the re-creation of this glamorous time in American cinema.