'State Department is pulling an agent who specialises in cartel activity.'
FBI!
What's our objective?
You're not American.
Who do you work for now?
I go where I'm sent.
Welcome to Juarez.
I think the fact that it asks you to question your own
moral compass as an audience member
and that you see this character that I play, Kate Macer,
who represents morality in a very amoral world,
and those themes of the cycles of violence and if the end
really justifies the means, I think, really struck me when I read it.
The script was quite spare and everything felt suggested,
so I really, you know, responded to that
because very often you feel like you're getting spoon-fed everything
when you watch a film or when you read it.
And that female protagonist in a very masculine world is unusual,
also a rarity.
FBI!
Sicario was a project that I fell in love with
because the story was so powerful,
so meaningful about our world today
and the fact that it was set at the Mexican border with
the United States, I thought, was something that affected me a lot
because it's a place in the world, I feel, that is sadly inspiring -
that strong contrast, two societies living side-by-side.
The city of El Paso at the border is recognised to be
one of the safest places in the United States
and right on the other side of the bridge is the most violent city
in the world and to have that strong contrast, I thought,
says a lot of things about the world today.
Take the weapon out.
Gun. Gun! Gun left.
'What are the rules here? Stay in the vehicle.'
When I read the script, I thought the story was original
and I...
You know, looking at the character, I was...
It pulled me in and then I...
Because I understood what was his motivations.
I understood where he was coming from, his actions.
But then the fact that I was repulsed by it too towards the end.
You know, those are the kind of characters
you want to build and so...
Then meeting the director,
Denis Villeneuve, was...
His enthusiasm, his sensitivity to the subject.
Where were you sent from?
Colombia.
Nothing will make sense to your American ears.
I love silence, the power of science,
and I work with actors that are so...
Have the skills to bring a lot on the screen just by the way
we will feel how they...
We see how they feel, they don't have to express it with dialogues.
It's like something that I feel is more cinematic this way and...
There's other directors that are doing it in a different way.
I prefer silence.
I had a lot of that on this film and...
There was a lot to react to because actually, in the scenes,
I am working with these enormous gorilla-like
Delta Force, DEA, FBI, CIA characters
who don't give anything away
and the scenes are played with great mystery
and we've got the character that Benicio is playing
who is so enigmatic and he's like a sort of ghost.
You know, you don't know what he is or what he does.
And I am working with actors like Josh and Benicio
who don't lay it all out bare.
You know, I think they hold a lot back and submarine it,
which is really exciting to do a scene with
because you are trying...
You are kept on your toes as to how they are going to
surprise you in a scene.
They just see $17 million.
That is a bogus bust, Kate.
No-one controls who deposits money in an account.
An attorney will have that back in a few months,
but a lot of heads will roll before then.
We can arrest Manuel for now, we get him off the street.
We've got to get Manuel called back to Mexico, that's the objective...
We have no jurisdiction in Mexico!
Actors, in order to be good, need to be directed.
At the same time, I should say that I love to give them space.
The more I am confident, the more I am learning about my job,
the more I love to give space to actors, meaning that
I love when they have the freedom to bring ideas. I love...
You know, creativity is about...
You have to draw everything on the table,
bad and good ideas, and then I choose as a director.
And so I like to create an atmosphere of a laboratory
with actors, where they will feel that their ideas are welcome.
When I first saw the film, which has
happened to me with the best film-makers I've worked with,
it's almost like everything is new.
Somehow, he just honours all that work and puts it together.
And...
..the bottom line is inclusion.
He includes everybody but...
..he's the captain. And he knows where it's going.
Taylor Sheridan was writing from a very personal experience
of having a brother who was
a journalist in that part of the world
and has his life threatened every day of the week
and so, yes, the film is fiction but I think it had a very strong,
compelling emotional heartbeat because these are real...
This is a real war that's going on down there
and so many people are being affected by it in a profound way.
The cartel have a way of searing their imprint onto people's lives
and a lot of people are losing their lives,
so you're dealing with...
This is not an exaggerated,
cartoonish depiction of what goes on down there.
So I think it is emotional.
You see the effect that it has on a Mexican family
and yet you see the effect it has on my character.
DOG BARKS
Move.
Get out of the car.
Jesus Christ.
I've made friends who work in this world.
In that world, the drug wars. DEA, law enforcement people. And they...
One of them said to me something when I was preparing for Sicario where he
said, "It's been 30 years of this war on drugs and not much has changed.
"The supply of drugs hasn't diminished
"and the consumption has not diminished."
So, it's kind of like...
It helped me understand the character of Josh Brolin
and my character of this last gasp of fighting fire with more fire.
And that rang truthful to me.
GUNSHOTS
The cinematography, again, is fantastic on the movie
because Roger is a genius, he's a master.
He's someone that has one of the strongest eye alive today.
But as a collaborative process, there's a long preparation.
We dream a lot about the movie together bringing our references...
..both of us. And once we define the alphabet of the movie
we will talk about the main qualities of the cinematography.
We aim for the strongest point of view and a kind of humility,
trying to make it as simple as possible.
Everybody is talking about Roger, about how great...
..he is with light and movement but for me
his biggest quality is storytelling.
Someone that has the ability to find a strongest point of view
all the time.
And I must say, I'm not bad myself but he's stronger than me.
HE LAUGHS
For me, every shot is a learning process with Roger.
All to tell a story in the most poetic and strong way.
MAN YELLS
What the...?
There were moments we were shooting
where I realised we were making something really, really special.
But I think when I saw the full picture
and just how cinematic it was,
when you see really what Roger Deakins has brought to the table
which is that other character of that prowling camera that
surveys and the claustrophobia,
the internal experience that you have watching it,
that was when I fully understood that this was a film
that you didn't listen to, it's a film you just felt.
Subtitles by Ericsson