Daily Inspiration Quote by Walter Salles

A filmmaker landing in London and heading straight for the NFT is a quiet flex, but it’s also a confession of allegiance. Walter Salles isn’t name-dropping a tourist landmark; he’s signaling a compass. The National Film Theatre (the BFI Southbank) isn’t about premieres and red carpets so much as repertory, restorations, and serious curation. Saying he “always” checks what’s playing there frames London not as a marketplace or a meeting schedule, but as a screening room - a city understood through programming.

The intent reads practical and almost disarmingly modest: he wants to watch movies. The subtext is sharper. Salles is aligning himself with cinema as a lineage, not just an industry. For a director associated with road narratives and humane, politically alert storytelling, the NFT represents a counterweight to the global content churn: a place where film history is treated as living material, where you go to be reminded of craft, influence, and risk. It’s also a nod to the kind of audience he’s speaking to - people who know the NFT is where you catch a rare print, a retrospective, a filmmaker Q&A that actually goes deep.

Context matters, too: in an era when “what’s playing” increasingly means whatever an algorithm floated to the top, Salles chooses a human gatekeeper. The line works because it’s understated cultural politics: a belief that taste is made in public, in rooms, with strangers, not just consumed alone.