Walter Salles

For a director more interested in following his creative intuition than calculating his career, Walter Salles won several awards and international acclaim which helped him earn a reputation as one of Brazil's leading filmmakers. After starting his career directing documentaries in the 1980s, Salles transitioned to narrative filmmaking with "A Grande Arte" (1991) and earned international attention for the socially conscious "Terra Estrangeira" (1995). In collaboration with Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, he received Oscar consideration with "Central Station" (1998) and enhanced his reputation as a striking filmmaker with "Behind the Sun" (2001). But it was the widely hailed road movie, "The Motorcycle Diaries" (2004) that allowed Salles to gain a foothold in Hollywood proper, leading to directing the remake of the Japanese horror thriller "Dark Water" (2005) and the long-developed adaptation of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" (2012). As he continued making films in his native Brazil, Salles had broken through in the States, where he continued rising in prominence while making creatively challenging films.