Pavel Giroud is a film director. He studied design and graduated from the Instituto Superior de Diseño (High Institute of Design) ten years ago.
He first worked as a designer, but for a very short period of time. He then began to paint, working with the basic plastic arts and incorporating video in his work. Gradually he managed to accompany his paintings with video installations, emphasizing on irony. Fake TV spots, fake narrative films... Then irony got the upper hand. The advertising business was beginning to take off in Cuba and someone from an ad agency approached Giroud about making a film for a Cigar brand. He accepted, and discovered he liked advertising. When People saw his videos, they told Pavel he was a “gifted storyteller” and encouraged him to try his hand at cinema. With the money from his ad work he started making short films.
Pavel Giroud had to do everything – from image to sound – when he directed his first short film. He even featured his friends in his movies, rather than professional actors.
The only film poster he has allowed in his apartment is the one for Todo por Ella, which he made with five friends in 2002. "That film really opened doors for me," he recalls gratefully. Most importantly it led to the excellent 3x2, which won the prize for best first film at the 2004 Montreal Film Festival. "3x2" was a joint effort among three young directors, Giroud along with Lester Hamlet and Esteban Insausti. Each had 30 minutes to portray a love affair. The film opens with Giroud's "Flash", set in modern-day Havana, where a photographer becomes infatuated with a 1950s fashion model. “It wasn’t a massive hit but it made us feel good and made us feel like we were making a real picture”. From there on, Pavel decided to focus his career on cinema.
Pavel Giroud only filmed what he wrote, until he read the script of the movie La edad de la peseta, written by Arturo Infante, a young screenwriter and director. “When I first read the script, I didn’t see in this movie the possibility to express myself as a director”. However, he gradually and simply fell in love with the script and the movie, “Now, I tell Arturo that it’s my film not his, and that he should forget he wrote it…” He finished "La Edad de la Peseta", in 2006. It's the story of a ten-year-old boy ("the silly age" of the title) who enters puberty just as his country's Revolution is getting under way. When film critics saw the movie, they named Pavel, the “new Cuban Truffaut”.
Giroud went back to his script duties for his most recent film, to be called Omerta. It's the story of a man who works as a bodyguard for one of Havana's big mobsters in the 1940s and becomes obsolete after the Revolution. "It's a story about ageing, and the art of ageing," Giroud says. And for some reason this makes him smile.
Giroud steers clear of artistic arrogance with natural ease. Probably because he is at heart a genuine artist. “I believe all my films, all my work reflects the reality of Cuba because it reflects my own reality as someone who lives in Cuba and it mirrors my concerns as a citizen of this country, as an individual. I cannot think of anywhere better than Cuba”.