16h 30min, feb 21, 2020 y - Johnny Depp MINAMATA Premiere Gala FILM FESTIVAL Berlin

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Three clips from the film Minamata were released to coincide with the world premiere screening at the Berlin Film Festival.

FROM THE BOSTON HERALD:

Depp dazzles at Berlin Film Festival

By STEPHEN SCHAEFER

BERLIN — Johnny Depp dazzled the Berlin Film Festival with old-fashioned star wattage, hitting the red carpet for the world premiere of “Minamata,” a dramatization of one of the world’s most famous ecological scandals, the corporate poisoning of a Japanese coastal village’s water.

Minamata has become synonymous with corporate indifference as factory waste produced irreversible spinal and nervous system effects in adults and children.

Depp, who also produced, plays veteran photographer W. Eugene Smith who brought Minamata to the world’s attention with now-classic photos in Life magazine.

At Friday’s afternoon press conference, a Japanese Minamata-based reporter noted that, although the film covers events in the early 1970s, “The Minamata disease is not over yet.” He asked Depp, in tinted glasses, a cowboy hat and plaid shirt whose rolled up sleeves displayed his tat-covered arms, “What did you think about Minamata disease in your own words?”

“When I first read the story — the nightmare that happened down there because of the mercury and toxic poisoned water — it was almost impossible to believe that something could not only arrive in such a horrific way but it spared no one. There was absolutely nothing they could do about it and so it was, What do people have to do to live?

“What happened in Minamata and the fact it happened at all is quite shocking, that it still continues is more shocking.”

Depp described himself simply as, “Someone who was interested and believed it was a story that needed to be told.”

Interjected director and co-writer Andrew Levitas, “Johnny’s too humble to tell you the truth, he’ll never talk about himself. Johnny was the driver of this from Day One. He’ll never stand up and take credit for how much he cares about these things but this came from him. All the passion and what we were able to do came out of Johnny’s heart and his passion. And it mattered.”

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