Paolo Branco does not like to give interviews. "Interviews are for stars," he says. "Not producers." And in that capacity he has produced hundreds of films from his native Portugal.

"A festival is like a window to the world," he says. "It's one of the best places to get a film known." But, as far as prizes go, "it's the reactions that you get from the press and the public that are more important."

The state of European films is a subject, Branco says, that takes longer than a brief interview to discuss, but he plunges in anyway. "America organised as a strong player a long time ago, while Europeans are defeating themselves," he says. "Look at what is going on in European television: it's getting more difficult to sell European films to TV. German television, for example, is buying fewer and fewer films from other European countries.

"It's not because the films are less attractive to the audiences. It has to do with the power of communication and publicity that the Americans have.

"In Europe we have to accept our diversity of cultures and the diversity of our films, and we must work together both in the cinema and in TV." OL