Tell me where the idea for "Central Station" came from.

The story crystallized in my mind one morning, and I wrote the basic architecture of the screenplay all in that morning. Then two very young screenwriters, João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, that had never written a screenplay before, worked on it. These are guys that had a lot of talent but no experience, but I think that desire and talent are far more important than experience.

There were several themes I wanted to explore, but the main thing was the desire that people have to communicate--to express their emotions and feelings--and sometimes their inability to do this. Dora, the character Fernanda Montenegro plays, has lost the capacity to communicate with everyone, including herself. She has lost her feelings and she cannot respond to any desire anymore. She leads such a cynical, self-contained life that she is incapable of sharing with others--and that includes sharing possibilities that life can bring you.

When she is confronted with this 9-year-old boy that just lost his mother, she is obliged--against her will--to give up the security of her egotistical, confined existence. For the first time, at the age of 67, the boy brings to her the possibility of living life to its fullest. The film is about the ability to start all over again at that advanced age.

On the other hand, I think that the question of the search is also really important in the film. We're talking about the woman who searches for her lost feelings and a boy who searches for his father. Since the Greeks, I think we've always been concerned with the idea of getting back to the place where we come from--to try to understand who we are. This is the boy's plight, but what the two of them discover is not only the family at the end of the film, but the importance of companionship, friendship and understanding.

In a way, these values are not really appreciated in today's very competitive society, where efficiency is everything. These questions of solidarity or friendship or everything that's important in the film are not rated in the Stock Exchange. This might also be one of the clues to why people respond to the film in such an emotional way. It talks about things that are not perceived as being important but are extremely important for our survival.

How did producer Arthur Cohn become involved with the project?

Arthur Cohn came in when the project was being put together. There were already a few co-producers involved with the project, in France, in Japan and in Brazil. But when Arthur came in, it gave a second wind to the project. He is not primarily a financier, he's somebody who really shelters the project and is creatively involved with every single step of the process. I think that one of the most interesting things about film, is that on one side it needs one man's vision and that's the author's vision. But on the other side, this is a collaborative medium and you have to be aware of that and integrate whatever is pertinent to the story and will benefit the film.

The final impact of the film results directly from the ideas Arthur brought and his positive creative input. It doesn't come as a surprise that he had such a fruitful relationship with De Sica on five different films. And if De Sica repeated the experience, it's certainly because he enjoyed the collaboration, I can see why.

Where did you find Vinicius de Oliveira?

This was one of those unexpected events happened to the film throughout the production phase. We interviewed and tested 1500 kids from all over the country. And as we were getting closer to principal photography, I was really not satisfied that we had found the right person. And one day I went to the small airport that lies in the center of Rio de Janeiro and the shoeshine boy at the airport came up to me. Because it was raining and he didn't have any clients at that moment, he asked me to help him buy a sandwich. He told me that once I returned from the city of Sao Paulo that afternoon, he would pay me back.

I liked not only his face and the dignity of his look, but I also liked his approach and I thought that he definitely had something special, although I could not tell you rationally what it was. I asked him whether he would like to do a test for a film and the answer was, "I've never seen a film before. I've never been to a movie theatre." Then I told him that that was not really important, it was just like television, but it was a much more dignified experience than television. He said, "Okay I'll do it, but can I bring my other friends? They are about the same age as I am." I told him, "Yes you can bring them, but you might lose the role because we're just looking for one kid." He said, "It's not important. I'd like to bring them anyway so everyone can have a chance." That made me like him even more, because somehow he had the quality we needed not only for the role but also for handling the filming. You need total concentration and discipline for a great number of weeks.

This boy somehow had it all within himself. And when we rehearsed the script before filming we learned how talented he was. He was nine and a half at that time and we all learned something from him, because this was a street kid that had the knowledge of what the street means and the difficulties of fighting for survival. But he had not lost his innocence in going through that phase. And therefore, he was very knowledgeable and very wise and yet still very innocent about everything. The small crew that put this film together realized that this kid was bringing something vital to the film. We all learned to respect him and he became friends with all of us. It was really an unforgettable experience.

He has an amazing costar in Fernanda Montenegro...

Fernando Montenegro is our own Gena Rowlands or Giulietta Masina. She is very selective in the projects that she takes on. She's mainly a theater actress who has made very bold choices. For example, she played the lead in a stage production of Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant," which was so successful that it went on for three years. So the fact that everything that she does on stage is so successful obliges her to refuse most film offers. I think that she has not done more than ten films in her entire career and most of them have won important festival prizes. For example, she starred in Leon Hirszman's "They Don't Wear Black Tie," which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

She is an extremely acute, intuitive, articulate, intelligent, wise person. A 67 years old actress, she has the same will to take chances as an actor that is just starting out. In this sense, to work with her is really a joy because she has that immense capacity to give to the whole crew the sensation that the experience is truly unique.

I understand that when Montenegro set up her table at Central Station, real people approached her to write letters for them.

It's true. We saw firsthand how many voices could not be heard and how much people had the desire to say things. It was very moving for all of us and it kind of dictated an emotional voltage for the whole film.

Did you throw away the script at that point and use what they said?

We used a lot of what happened on the spot as if we were in almost an experimental film. This was a script that was really developed through several months of hard work and suddenly we were hit by reality to such a point where we had to incorporate it. When those people started to talk to Fernanda Montenegro, they did so in such a poetic manner that it was really overwhelming to see it.

Why did you have Dora and Josué take to the road?

The main interest that I have in road movies is that the psychological arc of the main characters is always extremely interesting. They have to escape from that shelter they live in at the beginning and face the unknown. And the idea of facing the unknown, breaks the mold in which they feel secure and they have to respond to a world that they cannot control anymore.

So when she's on the road, Dora can open up enough to become interested in a man again. And later, when she arrives at the House of Miracles--the very spot where the letters that she doesn't send were supposed to arrive, she finally realizes how important it would be for these people to receive those letters. These people are praying for the survival of the relatives that are not there anymore, that are somehow in exile in their own country. Little by little she is overtaken by that mystical experience that is going on there, but also by the comprehension that what she has done directly affects not only the people whose letters she didn't send but the ones who have such a transcendent desire to communicate with them.

It's in fact the moment where she realizes the importance of sending the letters and also the importance of communicating with people that are different from you. And at that moment, she starts to become resensitized. This is when for the first time Dora and the boy will have physical contact. This is the inverted pieta in which the boy comes and takes her into his arms and protects her--reversing the role play in which Dora should have been the mother and he should be the protected child. Instead, he becomes the protective child and Dora becomes the protected mother. That's really an important transitional moment in the film.

This film is about a woman who learns the importance of sharing in life and the importance of having common experiences. I think that cinema is about that also. Fellini used to say that the beauty of film for him was the possibility to come into the theater as you enter a chapel and have the experience of sharing, by watching a film with a great number of people that you have never met. That common experience is something that is very rare today. There is a generosity in the act of going to the movie theater and sharing that common experience that makes cinema something that's so precious and so unique. When people are moved by similar emotions, then it's as if a small miracle was happening again and again and again.