Exclusive TakePart Q&A: ‘No’ Director Pablo Larrain Says Yes to No Mas Apathy

No, a film presented in conjunction with TakePart’s parent company, Participant Media, stars Gael García Bernal as René Saavedra, a brash advertising executive who leads a team of media hotshots to craft an ad campaign that promises Chilean voters something Pinochet could not offer: Happiness. Joy. Rainbows.

Sony Pictures Classics will release No in the U.S. early next year, and its prospects are good: The film took home the Art Cinema Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight.

No is the third film that director Pablo Larrain has set in Chile’s Pinochet years, following 2008’s Tony Manero and Post Mortem from 2010. With No, Larrain wraps up his Pinochet trilogy in a resolution of light and optimism.

In the pause between appearances at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals, Pablo Larrain sat with TakePart to talk about capturing the mood of dictatorship on film, why people who say voting is pointless are wrong, and what the world needs No Mas! of today.