Big dreams and disappointed expectations: Canadian director Denis Villeneuve on his film adaptation of “Dune”, the book that was considered impossible to film.
Interview by
Susan Vahabzadeh
When Canadian Denis Villeneuve, 53, first started filmmaking, he was an unlikely candidate for Hollywood blockbusters. After a few documentaries, he shot two highly regarded psychodramas around the turn of the millennium, “The 32nd of August on Earth” and “Maelström”. Since “Sicario” and “Arrival” he has also been a fixture in the USA – and so he was able to film the novel that was already close to his heart as a little boy in Québec: Frank Herbert’s science fiction story “Dune” . Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac) becomes the new ruler of Arrakis and comes to the desert planet with his son Paul (Timothée Chalamet), whose indigenous people, the Fremen, live underground while the raw materials of their planet are being exploited. How much present there is for him in “Dune”, Villeneuve tells in the Zoom call from Paris.