Steven Soderbergh is worried. For all. For the future of his country, for the future of cinema and even for the future of his future. What will happen to us if we are unable to imagine a more or less hopeful future? He asks. His latest film, which opens today in theaters, delves precisely into worry. 'The laundromat: dirty money', as it is entitled, takes the witness of Adam McKay's ironic-pedagogical films as 'The big bet'. In this case, about the book - Pulitzer Prize - of the journalist Jake Bernstein, it is about illustrating the path that goes from the purchase of life insurance to the disappearance of money in a complicated tangle of frontmen, 'offshores' and fictional societies ... The Papers of Panama . Then we will discover that complexity is directly proportional to the size of greed. That said, the director who reinvented the cinema three decades ago with 'Sex, lies and videotapes' and who later got the Oscar for 'Traffic' is worried. Who will carefree you?

Do you remember what your initial reaction was when the Panama Papers scandal broke out? The only thing that really surprised me was its size. Somehow, we have assumed that the rich evade taxes and scam us all. It is wrong, but it is so. But that so many people were involved, I was stunned. The naturalness with which a great mass of society sees it as normal or legitimate to commit a crime means that things are not going well. I understand that that was the political motivation to make the film ... I imagine that any of us has a commitment to what is fair or not, with the very meaning of society. We all know that stealing a bag from a lady who goes quietly down the street takes you to jail. But there are companies that essentially do the same and not only do we not take them to jail, but we entrust them with our savings. Those firms steal a million bags daily. Why do we have laws that condemn a thief of 10 dollars and excuse a corporation or a government that even steals 10 million? This leads me to a reflection on what has happened in Hong Kong. It refers to street protests ... Yes. What is it that makes people go outside spontaneously to demand a change from an unjust law? We talk about a movement without a leader or without an organization that maintains it. We live in a political situation so rare that confidence in politicians to change things is almost nil. The only resource is social mobilization and my film is somehow there ... But, in the end, we see how Trump wins in the United States and the extreme right grows throughout Europe. Bad ideas expand much faster than the good ones. Bad ideas are based directly on tonsils, they refer to the most instinctive part of what remains in our brains of reptile inheritance. The simplest is also the most powerful. And generally a bad occurrence does not require more effort than denying something. Good ideas require a lot of effort from many people over a long time. That is civilization. Of course, the more complicated the world is, the more lazy it is to seek solutions. People do not want to think. No one wants to do it. Is very tired. Therefore, the simplest thing is to stand in front of someone and say: "Do not make me work; tell me simply what I have to do." I am interested in the point that he made about what civilization means to you. Civilization consists in establishing mechanisms So that the transformations. Social justice is done without violence. It is about creating peaceful methods of transfer and distribution of power. One thing must never be forgotten: the destructive power of a single asshole is infinitely more powerful than the constructive collaborative power of a thousand intelligent people together. (Laughs) What do you think should be the social role or political responsibility of a director who like you tell stories in Hollywood? You have to keep in mind that the first thing the human being did when he started talking was complaining. Well, in an elaborate way, that's what I am. (Laughs) I imagine it's a good time to talk about your storyteller career. 30 years of sex, lies and videotapes are fulfilled. Do you think that the revolution that this movie meant is comparable to the one we now live in the digital universe? I refer to that famous quote by Zhou Enlai. When asked if the French Revolution was a good idea, he replied that it was still too early to know. In the case of 'Sex, lies ...', its merit was to read the spirit of the times. Like her, many independent films knew how to meet the need at that time for real stories with studies unable to react and plunged into an escalation desperate to do box office at any price. The funny thing is that Sex, lies ... made a lot of money and forced to redirect the business. Everyone said: "It was this ..." And something similar can not be happening with Netflix, Amazon ... The truth is that these platforms are making the cinema that the studios do not want to do. And people do want to see. Laundromat is the perfect example: a medium budget production for adult people. I can cite from my filmography films such as A Very Dangerous Romance, Traffic, Erin Brokovich ... All of them now could not be done in a conventional studio. And what do you think of the emergence of platforms with the arrival of, for example, Disney? I don't think it's bad that big companies compete with each other. Anyway, I think we live a bubble. There is no way to maintain this level of production for a long time. Is it possible that we end up missing Harvey Weinstein? Obviously, I mean the way they produce. Producers who bet on risk have not disappeared. But the business has changed in such a way that it is even more difficult for people like him to go out in a bad way (the stalker). The distribution of power is now much more divided and there are no people who accumulate the power that he came to have in a completely personal way. Will the cinemas end up disappearing? It will remain the main destination when you have an appointment. And I don't think people stop dating. Also, there is no equivalent in the entertainment industry that makes so much money so fast. I don't care that they disappear. What worries me is how the meaning of whatever cinema has changed. It is clear that he no longer has the central place in the culture he had. It is frustrating without a doubt. The idea of ​​the cinema that made me dedicate myself to this and that had to do with the power of offering another look to the world we live in, all that vanishes. But I don't want to look like a bitter old man. So, he doesn't retire as he announced several times a few years ago ... That was the result of a frustration over a very concrete fact of my work that made me believe that I was fed up with my job. It was a mistake. I got involved. I like what I do.

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