E33 • You Must Fight to Make Your Film • PIA MARAIS, dir. of ‘Transamazonia’ at the New York Film Festival, Chicago International, TIFF

Pia Marais shares insights from her filmmaking journey, including the making of her atmospheric new film “Transamazonia,” which just screened at the New York Film Festival following a Locarno world premiere. Past inspirations include Werner Herzog’s “Wings of Hope” and Asif Kapadia’s “Amy”.

Pia’s latest film explores themes of faith and family dynamics, and she discusses the complexities of casting, production, the importance of film festivals, and the ongoing challenges of securing distribution for independent films. 

Other topics include the evolving landscape of cinema culture, which has shifted significantly over the years with a need for more curated film experiences, as business decisions heavily influence American cinema these days. Also touched on are the differences between American and international cinema, particularly in funding and audience engagement.

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Chapters

• 0:44 Past Present Feature, Hosted by Marcus Mizelle
• 1:03 Introducing Filmmaker Pia Marais, dir. of "Transamazonia" at NYFF
• 4:44 The Evolution of Film Distribution and Audience Engagement
• 7:28 The State of American Cinema and Global Perspectives
• 10:44 Filmmaking in Germany: Funding and Production Challenges
• 13:36 Casting and Character Development in “Transamazonia”
• 16:25 Exploring Themes of Faith and Family Dynamics
• 19:32 The Filmmaking Process: From Concept to Production
• 20:12 Werner Herzog's "Wings of Hope" and Asif Kapadia's "Amy"
• 25:29 Distribution Challenges and Future Plans
• 28:42 Reflections on Filmmaking and Personal Growth

Transcript

Marcus Mizelle (00:01)
Sorry, I have to keep using these words like blessing, because it's a miracle this film actually exists somehow. There were so many moments

we may not have been able to continue shooting. The moments of devastation, because although we'd cut the script down, there were still lots of scenes we didn't have time to shoot because our schedule was like too tight. We were running. I never ran like I ran on this film. No. So when you got in the post and you had limited

we had one take. I do find fascination with certain things and one of them

limitations leading to gold, if you will. know, things that happen that you didn't plan, I'm very open to that. I'm see something that I wasn't expecting. In fact, that's what I

you

Welcome to the Past Present Feature podcast.

Marcus Mizelle (01:03)
In this Murray shares insights from her filmmaking journey, including the making of her atmospheric new film, Trans which just screened at the New York Film Festival following a Locarno world premiere. Past inspirations include Werner Herzog's Wings of Hope and Asaph Capadia's Amy. Pia's latest film explores themes of faith and family dynamics, and she discusses the complexities of casting, production, the importance of film

and the ongoing challenges of securing distribution for independent films.

Other topics include the evolving landscape of cinema culture, which has shifted significantly over the years with a need for more curated film experiences, as business decisions heavily influence American cinema these days. Also touched on are the differences between American and international cinema, Particularly in funding and audience engagement.

wherever you're listening to this please leave a quick review. really help us a lot. Thank you.

Marcus Mizelle (01:56)
I just feel like I need to do this. Sharing the information with people and learning myself, feeling less alone. I don't feel like we get to talk about it. And it's a kind of a lonely endeavor, truly. Making films has always been a little bit lonely, but I think the way we watch makes us quite lonely. That's interesting. As less and less people go to the cinema, or from blockbusters and stuff, but the actual essence of

Going to the cinema was actually something one didn't often do. I never went to the cinema alone. I've never practiced that as something I do. So it was always something social and it was always something you planned to somehow talk about in whatever way, not in an intellectual way or anything, but you would go one way or another, reflect upon it. And I don't get to the cinema so often anymore. I talk about this all the time, what you're bringing up. The kind of culture is lost.

compared to what it used to be. I talked about this last night with my friend. In the 90s, it was such a healthy intersection between art and business, at least in America, where like the genre films were alive and well, and the filmmakers were satisfied, the producers were satisfied, and then the audience was satisfied. With that, you had the home video, you had the culture of meeting at the video store, and the culture of all the film magazines, and there was just like this society that supported it and loved it. And it was like this thing that worked. Jumping ahead to post-

home video and streaming and more blockbusters and more business decisions on picking the low-hanging fruit of what they want to make and push out. This is America I'm talking about specifically. I'm always curious and trying to understand American film-going audiences. Do they just take what's given to them? And or does the majority have bad taste or do they want to be challenged or not? I don't know. I think it used to be there and it used to be the culture was there.

And I things change, but it's really a devastating worst case scenario when you start seeing empty theaters and home video going away really was a big deal. I think for everybody, for producers, filmmakers that have a second life for their movie, et cetera. And I think also for the audience, for the public, they don't own the film anymore. So they don't really value it anymore. But you don't think that happens through VOD? Films having a second life? I don't think so. I think it's something, but...

I think VOD was cool and it is cool. It's like practically great, but it's also replaced home video. I want to know that I have it when I need it if the wifi goes out and I have the highest quality version of the movie and the proper kind of sound options. And that's just me being fancy pants. Even the everyday person had a DVD collection. VHS collection. You copied VHSs. Yeah, yeah. You had to do what you had to do. But anyways, I love that you started out with this because what are the silver linings?

or I need to start really thinking about what is working out there. Like what movie is doing I think is really cool. Of course Criterion always from Forever. It's like the places like Vidiots here in Los Angeles for example, like they really support that culture that we're speaking about. I feel like it's gonna go back to more of a selective situation where it's gonna go back to, it's gonna niche down and I think we're gonna go back to kind of two screen theaters, maybe four screen theaters right before the Megaplexes went nuts. We don't need four of the same movie playing and that movie being crappy and

way too loud, bleeding into the other theater. They're empty, you know? I'd rather have two theaters packed than eight empty theaters, right? Obviously, what we watch tends to reflect in some way or another what's going on in the world. The Second World War, had filmmakers like Ljubic making films which were vastly important, actually very political in a way, but still entertaining. And I just wonder as things become more and more...

crazy and senseless if people are going to start looking for more sense. And that would be literally what you're saying, that instead of having sort of huge multiplexes with eight sort of screening opportunities, you might just have more of a curated two screen cinema where someone is actually curing films or works that have some more substance. That's what I would like to see. But I think it's more than just what I would like to see. It makes sense to me. think curation is a very important thing to choose what gets put on the screen. The people that do this for a living.

People that actually have their ear to the ground. You need tastemakers at the end of the day. Who's choosing those eight or 12 films? I'd rather somebody that's festival programmer or a filmmaker. I love the situation where filmmakers are on the jury of a festival. I love that, do you what mean? Where filmmakers are choosing. And I'd rather have that than an executive, whoever. It's so important to talk about and it's fun to predict, but I do think it's gonna be okay. I just think it's gonna niche down. I think it's gonna niche down.

And there's so many great filmmakers and films. It's so mind blowing. When I started doing this, I didn't really realize how many amazing people out there just telling really great stories. And most of them are not in this country. I'm hopeful for the product. It's just this constant like challenge or understanding of how do you get it to the people? What is the next best way to get it to the people? Interesting that you're saying most of them are your country. You have so much talent in America.

and storytelling seems inherent to you. I could be giving ourselves too much of a hard time. I guess I have to be more specific with what I value. I love being entertained. I love escapism, but also I love realism. It's like, how far are you going to go to give me, as a viewer, what I would like? There's a lot of great horror films. Let's go ahead and say that. Horror, Renaissance, whoa, okay, cool. There are a lot of great things, and maybe I'm taking it for granted, but the bulk of stuff is just people making things that don't need to be made. And they're doing it.

not because they need to do it, they're just doing it because they want to be cool or they want to have a movie. I feel like the international scene you have more of these films and maybe it's also that way. I'm only seeing these festival films, the ones that make it, that rise. seems like they're desperate to get it off their chest, whatever the film is. It's absolutely necessary. And I feel like the scene to prop those films up is there more as well. In America...

Hollywood runs the show and Hollywood is business first. It's frustrating because there are great filmmakers here. They don't squeeze through the Hollywood door and then they just get lost in the VOD aggregation, predatory aggregation world. Yeah, we have that too. I live in Germany. I would also say that a lot of the films made don't need to be made. But I guess everybody doesn't get to make their film. wouldn't have certain filmmakers like, for example, Marinada rising up with Tony Edmund.

or certain films being developed and made, guess they need a bit cool. It's like, what's good enough? It's this invisible thing, but what's good enough now? What is the bar now versus going back into the past, Time Machine, 1995, 2000? Where like the level, at least from my perspective, it seems like the level has dropped considerably. And I feel like it's just this whole collective ecosystem of filmmaker, audience member, and everybody in between. I don't know.

How I feel about this. There's a lot of good that wasn't there before. There's just the culture and the viewers, they're not being given what they need. They're being given junk food constantly. So Berlin, I've been there once, Berlin Film Festival, the week before COVID actually started. And I fell in love with that city. I really loved it so much. What is it like to live and make films in Berlin? I live here. I studied film here. I'm not German. I'm South African Swedish. So another Swedish father, South African.

So this was a place where I could study film for free. And in fact, we were given money. I went to, at the time, still interesting film school called the DFFB. I'm sure it still is. Started in the 60s and the first generation of it, there were parts of the Baden-Meinhof, the terrorist organization. Some of their members studied there. So it had a certain political undertone. Not at the time that I studied there anymore, but it had this reputation of being a bit of the film schools in Germany.

It's called the Deutsche Film und Fernsehen Academy, the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. So apart from the films I made at film school, I haven't actually made a film in Berlin. That's what I actually wanted to say. Germany has a regional funding system like most European countries. Germany has regional and federal funding systems that you can apply to. It's a competition to get the money. The production company that I've worked with, actually on all the films, Pandora Film.

who were the producers of Jim Jaramusch, Carlos Mekki, the German co-producers in the early days. They are based in another region. So we have mostly worked out of another region of Germany to get part of the money to make my films here. Well, it is competitive and has become very competitive also because

One aspect of making films in Germany is that it's also connected to the public television stations, they are broadcasting and they sit in all the funds and it's become very difficult to get any money from television. If you have funding money, a producer actually has to bring some money into the project and that would be market money, which television or broadcasters giving money could be considered market money, thereby the investment of the producer.

And this has become very difficult to get and thereby it's become very competitive because if you don't have the TV money, it's harder to get the money from the fund. because you need to incentivize them to pick you, right? As Americans, we're all about private funding here. We don't have the film funds supplied by the government. That would be nice. But then you start thinking about it. That doesn't sound as easy as it might seem initially either because everybody's trying to go through that same door, right? It's similar at the end of the day. I would say there is a difference. Although I would start to think that the funds

behave more and more like private investors. They tend to invest in a film that's going to bring them to the red carpet. And I guess that's what an investor would do if they were putting some money into an art house film that they don't think is going to garner a huge audience. So I think the two things with the funding system are either you're going to bring them an audience, is obviously talent based with the actors, how commercial.

What is the story? What genre is it? Or is it sort of red carpet and it can be a bit eclectic? And not having your experience of living in America, I think it might be something similar with finances, since it is not their private money. I think that's probably just much harder to gain the trust of. Just even the concept of it, though, it seems legit as far as it being from the people and for the people. It would be nice if we had some sort of government funding just to help out.

A little bit. Just a little something. It's a different beast. All around the world you have these film funds. In different countries, right? But how does, you know, Sean Baker finance his films? Probably just private financing. Because overhead is tiny. I think he just made so many great movies at such a cost. I don't know what the financing looked like for Florida project. And then Anorra was like, boom. Did you see Anorra yet? It's really good. It's not overrated. It's like this original, fresh, new kind of Odyssey. I don't even know where to begin. It really is special.

And I'm trying to get him to come on this thing and he won't do it. I'm too small now, I miss my boat. come on. You'll come. No, he did say he appreciates what we're doing. Sean Baker is so special because he is obviously a lover of cinema and world cinema. And it shows in his work. Enora makes me think about all the movies he probably watched and was inspired by. It's just like this movie that's just wrapped up and you got to see it to be able to talk about it. But he's a special American filmmaker. Very special. We need more Sean Bakers. I don't feel like there's a lot of people that are like that. How he finds financing, who knows?

How did you find financing for Trans Amazonia? even have three million when we started to shoot. took a long time. Me personally, I was not the producer. That was Sophie Erb, specifically a French producer who struggled very hard to find money for this. The idea was originally to work with some kind of crossover that we would get an American well-known actor to play the father and we'd get a possibly well-known.

UK actress to play Rebecca. And that was a good plan. That was the beginning. It turned out to be very hard for us to find that actor to play the father. It was very hard to find the right Rebecca, but the part was attractive. May I ask why was it hard just to simply find somebody who worked for the I think it was the idea. When we started looking, it was still the pandemic. And I guess the idea of shooting

in the Amazon in Brazil. Anybody with any idea of comfort and obviously the age group we were looking at. A lot of those people have families and been gone for weeks. Although we didn't have a long shoot at all, but we didn't know that yet when we started. It was obviously not something that anybody who could bring money to the project would think, yeah, why not? And maybe it could have been the ambiguity for that part because

in this time and age, obviously, and I was very aware of that, the very tricky character to portray and tell and how do you get that right in tone. This is a good moment to read the synopsis of your movie. Trans-Amazoni is a 2024 coming of age film directed by Pia Moret, who co-wrote the screenplay with William Throst. The film stars Helena Zingal as the daughter of an American missionary in the Amazon rainforest, played by Jeremy Zito, who claims that his daughter is a faith healer. The atmosphere is through the roof. That was like the first kind of big thing.

You have some movies where you feel like you're there. You feel like you can smell it almost. You feel like you hear it. You feel the condensation and the rain falling. It was just very much atmospheric, which I really appreciate. You don't always see that being taken full advantage of. And then also the opening scene was traumatic. I loved how it just opened with this character's probably most traumatic moment of her life right after a plane crash. And you show that slowly. A lot was established in the beginning.

And that opening scene was really impactful because it was this moment that kind of led the way for the rest of the film in a couple of ways, where you introduce the indigenous and you introduce the lumber people, the ones cutting down the rainforest. And you have this kind of girl in the middle of it who gets dropped into this situation by the universe. And she's rescued by this indigenous. And all of a sudden you find out that her dad is a preacher of faith. Pentecostal.

and he's using her to convince these people that she is a faith healer. What does that remind me of? Kind of like the Benjamin Button. I did, a long time ago. Lance Nichols character in Benjamin Button, that preacher, reminded me of as far as how big it was played. It's such a fun character, actually, showing this religious cartoon character almost in a way. These pastors, which is like real life though, I it was an interesting shift. wow, this is interesting. You have the loggers.

You have the indigenous, you have the girl in between, and then you have the extension of the girl who is this dad. What's the decision to make him a preacher? Is it to extend the fact that these people are just being misled and they're being taken advantage of? It's just an interesting choice for the story to go in that direction. can't really remember. I know it was connected to her because for me, I was interested in this idea of it being a miracle that she survived and having been somehow inspired by...

The story of Juliane Koepcke. I don't know if you ever saw the Van Et Hetschhoek film about Juliane Koepcke. It's a documentary, surviving a plane crash. The thing with Koepcke, she was in a plane crash, 71, obviously long before any social media existed. And when she arrived back into civilization, she had blood red eyes, like a demon. And she became this overnight phenomenon of the world.

in newspapers and people from everywhere started to project onto her and felt they were somehow connected to her. even to the point where sort of some astrologer would write her, send her a chart saying, this is your chart and this is why you survived and everybody else didn't. So it became really erratic and irrational. And I was really interested in that. And there were all these missionaries that were also in this plane crash, started to really research and in

conjunction with that and the fact that I wasn't able to adapt her story and I never really wanted to truthfully adapt her story, but I was really quite taken by it. I started to think about projection and miracle and of course the Pentecostals do believe in miracle healing. Then we got in from that to researching all these miracle healers, child miracle healers in Brazil and America. And I started to think about that.

and a film that I'd found really compelling, this Asif Kapadia documentary about Amy Winehouse and very peculiar relationship to her father where you start to think about all this whole genre of parents keeping their children, not allowing them to actually grow up and misappropriating trust in a way and abusing them for their own needs. I don't want to say

The idea of being only abusive but just misappropriating their children and using them to fulfill their own artistic, creative needs, I was coming more from that so the father could only become a preacher. I felt that he had been through loss himself and through finding her, she brought him to that.

And actually in some early version of the script there were actually scenes. But I think it was just never a question to me because it was always a missionary. And this idea that he was also a preacher really felt like it had to be that. For me a very important scene was coming from this idea of this relationship Amy Winehouse had with her father or you have it in many different relationships specifically. Conditional love. The child has to dance to make the parent love it.

And will the parents still love it when it ceases to dance for them or ceases to perform? And this was the thing I wanted to explore in this crazy setting. Nice. Two things. Wings of Hope. The German title, Julianne's Falls into the Jungle. 1998 made for TV documentary directed by Werner Herzog. The film explores the story of Julianne Koca, a German Peruvian woman who was the sole survivor of

Lanzaflight 508 following its midair disintegration after a lightning strike in 1971. Herzog was inspired to make this film since he had narrowly avoided taking the same flight while he was location scouting for Aguilar the Wrath of God. What? Has reservation had been canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary? That's crazy. Okay, that film, it's cool to note that for our purposes. And I'm definitely gonna watch that. I've doing documentary film past five years and I've been seeking out just older docs and I didn't know about this one. So was this kind of like an initial inspiration? Yeah. Gosh.

Real life is way crazy. I think it was that documentary and then Amy. Amy, One Hell's Dog. What I remember most about that doc is that thread of the family member feeding off of the success. Why do you think you were attracted to that aspect of it? I mean, the thing is, one doesn't start out thinking, that's why. I don't know that I know why I wanted to make the film or what kept my interest in making the film for so many years, because it did go on for quite a while.

until we actually manage to make it. And I think it has to do with one's own uncertainty as to whether I'm unconditionally loved by my parents or not. It's also this thought of what is it that defines who you become. I suppose there is no limit to that. But if you take a film like Vertigo, for example, which is...

A film that's a structure of trauma. It's so fascinating because the structure of the film is actually also reflecting the theme of the film and that's so brilliant. I love this because that opening scene reminds me of your opening scene where the opening scene is the trauma point. You're seeing it. Boom. Actually, I watched a film the other day where I was reminded in beginning of The Jock, a horror film called Cuckoo by a very talented German director called Tillmann Singer. How was that? I haven't seen that.

No, I enjoyed it. I actually love horror. I have to tell you. It's beautiful film. However, I guess that's where I was coming from. What is it that finds you? I don't want to say big trauma, but what is that little trauma that you don't understand, that you keep reflecting on and reworking? Yes. And then it's like this subconscious thing that's really for sure there. Isn't it interesting how when you make a film and then you don't even know what it is that you're after until after you shot the film. That's the

most beautiful thing to me. I'm always really skeptical when people say I've worked it all out beforehand and I know exactly what I want to tell and then I just go and execute and then I think why? That's why I love documentaries so much because I'm unable to control the situation as much and I've learned very quickly that the universe will provide if you let it. And it's easier than trying to freak out and control everything. I've already done that and the results weren't great. I actually I think really good directors

give space when they trust they give space and let people offer them. And that's being a good human too, think it is really like space with other people, space with yourself. Okay, your film, how did you move from your plan of casting an A-lister, trying to packaging your film, getting it ready? How did you move on to what it became? Towards the end of the pandemic, we had a sort of A-lister young actress wanting to play Rebecca. She was so great, but in retrospect, Helena, who

played the part and who is so talented was meant to play that part. So things in that sense only happened the way they should because I do love Dreyer's films. Cartheodor Danish, a filmmaker who made John of Arc, he made films that have something very Protestant in a way and it's always about faith and Helena's interpretation when she sent a casting through.

that we waited for a long time, but when she finally sent it, I just had the feeling, my God, I believe her. And that was really important to me, to have the feeling, okay, I believe her because the father can be a charlatan somehow, and I'm gonna have fun with that, but she can't. She has to remain a projection also for me, because if I don't believe that, then I think the film can't work on this basis of her being this projection. We decided to just try to work with

and find a really good actor to play the part. And I did find an actor I loved from films that I'd loved in the 90s, a wonderful actor who then had to leave the project about nine days before shooting. And then I was blessed that the universe gave me gifts by Jeremy C. Doe popping up thanks to a wonderful sound engineer, Dana Pazampour, who had...

worked on a documentary with Jeremy, he's a documentary filmmaker as well, based in LA. And so Jeremy just did a tape and he had a background in acting and dancing and was working on a documentary and he did like a recording and I was forced to recast so it was just crazy. I was just meeting actors on the set. Just the plot twists of making a movie. move the dates when the shoot would...

would start because we had so little money. We're in a straight jacket. It is so stressful. Fiction filmmaking is cruel. I do think of the Werner Herzog movie with the documentary, Burden of Dreams. It's so interesting when you have this intent to, I call it packaging, trying to get some attraction built up. Obviously you want quality or you would desire maybe a bigger profile for the project with an actor who has a high profile, right? And it would bring possibly more attention to the film.

maybe bigger cells, more eyeballs eventually. How do know when to move on from that? I think the moment is when you're starting to feel hopeless. And I was not feeling so hopeless because I understood we needed someone who could bring money for the financing of the film. But in the year prior to 2022, we were still hoping to find that A-lister. We had meetings in Cannes and it was difficult to find money to make the film.

private investors. And in Cannes, we had a meeting with all the co-producing countries. And it was really clear that we possibly wouldn't be able to shoot the film unless I would come to the conclusion and make the decision to cut the script down completely. From what to what? Me and Félix, we must have cut like a good 40 % of the script. There were so many more action scenes. It was just much bigger. Rebecca's story was like much fuller.

The story, which really was told through her perspective, was cut down to something very rudimentary. And it didn't feel bad because it felt like, okay, it's cutting it down to something that's maybe just more essential and it's fine. Do you feel like it made it better in the end? You know, in editing, I often was missing the scenes, yeah. Fair enough. Thank you for that honesty, because that's so easy to be like, yeah, definitely. You want to feel better about it, but sometimes no. But you did what you did to...

to get the film made, I guess, So at that point where I really cut the script down, in my opinion, I thought from that moment, I was like, I just want to make this film. And now it's about squeezing it into a budget of the money that we might have available, which at the time I think was like 2.7 million. Tight. Not even actually. So tight. Shooting a film on the Amazon.

And then I was just looking for ways to do it. So I was like, actually, all I want is a good actor. I don't want some star or anything. We don't need it. Let's just make the film. I had a brief moment of freedom and liberty, and I reached out to an actor whose performances I have often loved in films. And he was very excited and wanted to embark on this film with me, but then had to leave. So then Jeremy came on board and...

I have to say that Jeremy was a blessing. He really was, because I think at the end of the day, we were still more low budget than the actor that I had been speaking to, who had committed several months of his life to the project and preparing the character. And was really able to understand that we would be so vulnerable to the circumstances, that we wouldn't have air conditioning, that there wouldn't be caravans of any kind.

There was just none of this. Like even watching this movie, you feel hot. You feel like you're there. Amazon. Let's move on to production. If you don't mind. What was it like to shoot in the Amazon? We shot in two different parts of the Amazon. In both of those parts, it was quite different. So we shot all the forest scenes inside the forest predominantly in French Guiana, which has literally a very intact primary rainforest. It means it's like the first forest because the more you cut the forest down the hot root,

comes to penetrate it. And also because the more it's been cut down, the more light rides on the ground and the more things grow. In a primary rainforest, you can see for about 50 meters through the trees, we have quite a clear vision. And it's not full of thorns. I'm not saying it's not dangerous in any way. Obviously, you have snakes and stuff and all sorts of things. That's one of the first things I think about. We were visited by some coral snakes.

No, was French Guiano. Did you have snake wranglers and things like this? You had to have that or no? No? We didn't have money. Fair enough. I used to be a lighting guy on big movies and TV shows years ago. And you'd have all those items because they just went away. Of course. Especially in Louisiana. It was really like the trans-Amazonic highway was so important to me. And in fact, we shot in three different parts of the Amazon. were based in Brazil. We were based out of Belem, which is an older colonial city, but the mouse...

of a huge river. And actually I love them. I love the Amazon food and everything. No, it's fantastic. And they have very different plants and they have fish, meat, but it's like nothing I've had before. We had wonderful food, especially the fish was fantastic. And yeah, well, these river fish and so on. But that whole area of Pará is like huge. It's just so deforested. You're in the Amazon, but...

There's so much deforestation that we were looking for this road that would be a gravel road with forest on either side that we could shoot as the main road in the story. And the Trans-Amazonian Amazonica is actually like this vein through the Amazon. We couldn't find it due to deforestation and the fact that all the roads are tarred and those that aren't are just too narrow. We had to drive for about 11 hours out of Belem.

And we arrived in this place called Tukurwi. And Tukurwi is a place that has a huge electricity plant and an artificial dam. It's where John Bowman shot Emma Forest when there was still forest. This film is also dealing with deforestation. And so obviously he was shooting there at the time when they were deforesting it. Anyway, so we shot the road there and we worked with the Yatsurini Nation.

in their indigenous reserve because the part of the road we were shooting on was actually exactly in their reservation. And their reservation is a long shape, but it takes 19 minutes to drive through it, 19 minutes of forest. We have patches of forest where the indigenous lands are. It's such an image, the indigenous versus Western colonialism. It's just, what an image. is sad, but the thing is that we were very fortunate to work with these indigenous people.

the Asurini because I was very fortunate anyway to work with a wonderful actor who did the casting and the workshops with the indigenous people, Claudio Barra, and I think he started working years ago with Victor Babb on his Amazon film, which I'm not crazy about. I have to say I don't like it at all. Dealing with indigenous and not being of that world, but being the filmmaker.

Talk about that process. How do you feel like you need to be? How do you tread as you move forward in that process? The first time I went to the Amazon, which is quite a few years ago, I went with a journalist to another part of the Amazon to research. And actually the whole story, much of the outer plots, say, of Trans-Amazonia is really inspired by a conflict that one indigenous nation, Tenerim, had with the neighboring logging town. And on that trip,

where we stayed for about two weeks with the Tenerin people, I discovered one thing. And that is that I don't want to say God bless them because I'm not religious, but these Tenerin people protected themselves. They trusted this journalist because he'd written extensively about the conflict they were having. But at the same time, they were having some kind of rift amongst their people where some wanted to live a more Western life.

and the others wanted a more traditional life. And this conflict, which we felt and stumbled into situations that gave us an idea about it, was something they really kept us out of. So they were very selective in what we were allowed to see, who we were allowed to speak with. They were very protective. And I actually thought about it, and I thought that it only makes sense to me because why should they trust? There's absolutely no given

reason why they would ever trust any of us. They've only experienced harm. So that's an intelligence on their part to just not... And that gave me a sensitivity. So I already knew that however we approach working with Indigenous people, the only way it's going to happen is when they participate in the experience. And that was really important. And the great thing was that this Claudio Barros is an actor, a theatre director, but he has

about 30 years of experience working with indigenous people and nations, and he's an activist for them. He's the key to unlock the door a little bit in that regard. He completely unlocked doors, and also because he has a certain method. did the casting where he first went to Manaus and he was casting young men because we were predominantly looking for young men to literally the lead, Silas, and he contacted indigenous

people or katsikis, the chiefs that he knew. Obviously to get their permission, then you have to the permission of the Funai, which is the indigenous organization. And he went there and he started this casting and Silas, who plays the long-haired young indigenous actor, I'd fallen in love with a tape where he had a monkey, but on his shoulder he's got a little pet and he was probably like 12 years old actually. I think he was 13 when we shot.

Yeah, it's very young, very brave. Can I ask you about that real quick, working with a 13-year-old actor? Because I feel like kids are lacking self-awareness at a certain age. What's the point where they become self-aware? I feel like around 13 or maybe not. What is it like working with a 13-year-old actor? First of all, he's had such a great upbringing because his mother is an amazing lady who doesn't take any shit. She's quite strict, but she's so loving. And he actually comes from a family of, let's say, influences. His mother...

makes clothes and his sisters have like a fashion brand in Manaus. So they've had this contact to as have most of the indigenous people in the film with exception of the first young man, Shwao, that one sees at the very beginning of the film. He was great. He had no alerts. He was just happy to do his job and having fun, think, because we

indigenous people from different nations, three different nations. Obviously you can't impose the Asurini culture onto Hamal who played Silas or the indigenous Shau, Shavanch, is the indigenous man at the beginning. Claudia went about creating with them a fictional tribe where they all participated in creating the myth of them, the legend of them, their backstory and everything. that

was something they created, that's something they brought the name and they brought the way they are, the makeup and everything. So it's something that they did so that they would have license to their characters, yeah. How was post-production? How was editing? Was it so easy and smooth? Did you have no problems at all? It was not easy, but I was so lucky. One of the countries which we did a co-production, Taiwan, was in many ways a wonderful blessing to this film.

Sorry, I have to keep using these words like blessing, because it's a miracle this film actually exists somehow. There were so many moments that we may not have been able to continue shooting. The moments of devastation, because although we'd cut the script down, there were still lots of scenes we didn't have time to shoot because our schedule was like too tight. We were running. I never ran like I ran on this film. No. So when you got in the post and you had limited coverage or limited scene, yeah, scene coverage.

Yeah, we had one take. I do find fascination with certain things and one of them is limitations leading to gold, if you will. know, things that happen that you didn't plan, I'm very open to that. I'm happy to see something that I wasn't expecting. In fact, that's what I

But I think here we were really stressed. And I'd say the only time that happened was when a drone operator went and shot the drones on the Sonica Highway without me.

And I specifically asked him to do a couple of takes, but all he did was one take and it was all over the place, but it's in the film. And that was a happy shot because something about it, although I know that if he'd gone back, he could have got a better one, but it's okay. I was happy with that shot. It was my film, yeah. But you were asking about post-production and I wanted to say that I had this amazing privilege to work with an amazing editing team of...

A French editor based out of Taiwan, Mathieu Laclaron, who edits all the Jia Zhangjie films, amongst many other films. He edits a lot of films. And his partner in editing, Yan Shan Cai, apart from spending a month in Berlin, or just a little less than a month in Berlin, editing together, we edited remote. We actually edited for very short amount of time because we'd have sort of a window where I would wake up very early.

in order to edit for four or five hours and that would be late at night their time. So we'd edit starting in their afternoon and my morning, sort of seven in the morning. And we'd do a cut, they were editing on final cut, so they could do a cut really fast because it's faster with the sound to move it around. And so we'd do sort of like a cut and then we'd screen it two days, three days later. I'm not really good at if someone goes and chops the film up.

I have to be part of the process. Okay, let's go from production to putting your movie out in the world. We premiered in Locarno and then we went to the New York Film Festival. They are all about just size. It's impressive. Yeah. I have to say I was pretty like, my God, how's this going to pan out? But I have to say we did the sound check and everything and it was really good. Switzerland, the standards, really high. The projection was fantastic. Locarno seems really cool. That festival seems to be really special. It's a holiday.

I think so. People go there, it's relaxed. And then New York Film Festival. I really appreciate the New York film scene. It's Lincoln Center and it's that whole kind of New York film scene. What was your experience at NYFF? It felt wonderful to screen the film at this festival and also for the film to be in the company of so many films that I'm still dying to see. Like Anura, it was in the main slate, but I felt so honored that the film was in the company of Almodovar.

and filmmakers that I have loved for so long. The festival didn't feel like a festival in the same sense as a European festival feels, you know? I think because it feels like more curated events. At a normal festival in Europe, you'll have lots of filmmakers and people congregating at the same time, maybe with a market and everything, and this felt very different. But in that, it also was really nice to show it

to a New York audience and so I enjoyed it. What would you say a New York audience is? What are they like? That's a good question. Disruptive? No, in a good way. I think conversation is a good thing. And even if people don't agree, which is good, but I mean that in a funny way. We had a great 85-year-old Cinemagoa who was rather disruptive in our screening and then we became really good friends in the evening and

spoke about film and everything and that was really sort of person you wouldn't meet possibly here in Berlin if you go to the cinema. So I felt like the audience was more varied and opinionated and I like that. Was he disruptive during the Q &A or during the film itself? was the end of the Q &A but it was just more...

that she needed to talk about something and she wasn't exactly happy with the end, that the father would be forgiven. Understandable from one perspective and I just see it differently. What are your plans next for the film? Do you have a distributor and distribution line up and all that? We have distribution in quite a lot of European countries and Brazil, but we don't have a US distribution, unfortunately. How did you go about with the international sales? Do you have a sales agent through? It's the sales agent that's literally taking care.

and the producers. That feels good to have your film in good hands. Why do you make films? Big old question for you. Why do you do this? Obviously you love it because it's painful and you put up with it, right? And then also, what would you tell your younger filmmaking self when starting out? What would you tell them now if you could just go back in time? I would tell them to work the room. I'd take every opportunity, possibly in an American way, because in Europe, it was probably at the time that I was studying it, was more seen as something you didn't do. And I find that...

terrible because you do need to go out and promote yourself and you do need to go out and develop a thick skin and fight for your projects and not take things personally and not let things like that put you down. I think that would be the advice I would give because honestly in this time and age if you're not coming from one of these families where all the connections are in place you do need to fight to make your film.

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