Richard Gere sees the new film as a tribute to his deceased father RTL Street

“My father died a few months before we started shooting this movie,” Gere said emotionally in Cannes. “He was about 101 years old. He lived at my wife’s house and was in a wheelchair.” Gere says that his memory deteriorated during the last period of his father’s life. “He lived in a different reality, sometimes in a dream world, sometimes in reality. This is where we’ll all go eventually, eventually. Time disappears. I wanted to capture that feeling in this film.”

It’s important for actors to also capture these kinds of moments in life, believes the Pretty Woman actor. “The actors have the opportunity through the film to explore the essence of what it means to be human,” Gere said. “Maybe it can help point the way on this crazy path we’re all on.”

The star found it quite confronting to see himself in the film as a dying man. “It was an emotional experience, because my father had just died and I look a lot like my father,” he explained. “But it is strange that as an actor you are constantly faced with the whole life that lies behind you. When I see a collection of my work at a festival, I mainly see myself as having played a certain character at certain times in my life. It is very strange to realize that those images will outlive me, and that A big difference with theatre, where the interpretation is when the play stops only in the minds of the audience.

Canada has a chance to win the Palme d’Or later this week. The film is scheduled to be shown in Dutch cinemas later this year.