I love to work with old actors, says Brazil’s Fernando Meirelles
The filmmaker, while visiting India with his next film The Two Popes, says his film City of God feels like a ghost on his back and he wants to do a film on soil in future.
Fernando Meirelles is the Brazilian filmmaker best known for City of God, a multi-award-winning film about organised crime in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. He was recently in Mumbai for the MAMI film festival, and chatted about his latest film, the Netflix special The Two Popes; shooting for a biographical comedy-drama, farming, and preferring to work with ‘old’ actors. Excerpts from the interview…
The Two Popes is inspired by the true story of a funny interaction between Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the then future Pope Francis. What attracted you to direct this delicate subject?
My first intention was to make something on the Pope. When I was offered the chance to do a film on him, I thought, it’s very difficult do a film on the Pope as it would be a kind of biopic and a bit boring. But then they sent me the script, and I realised that it’s brilliant and surprisingly funny. It talks about a very specific time in his life and tells it very smartly, so I jumped right in.
Also I love to work with old actors [Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, in this case]. They are so effortless when they are in front of the camera. In Brazil I directed a TV series called The Experienced. All the actors were above 80. It was a fantastic experience.
Given how much you prize your independence, how do you adapt or cope when large production houses like Netflix get involved?
Netflix is big but one of the producers of The Two Popes, Tracey Seaward, is a friend of mine. She was one of the producers for my film, The Constant Gardener. She brought almost the same crew to The Two Popes and all of them are my friends. It was surely the biggest production in which I have worked, but it felt homey with old friends around me.
Also Netflix was very supportive. They were open to all my ideas and didn’t censor anything. Their possible audience is so huge in number that they can take risks that the mainstream studios can’t.
Do you like it when people keep talking about City of God, even though it’s been 17 years?
Two years after making City of God I realised that this film was going to be a ghost, on my back, for the rest of my life. I have come in terms with that. They are now thinking about a TV series in Brazil called City of God, but I don’t want to be a part of that.
How does the city of Sao Paulo, where you grew up, influence your storytelling?
It comes back in the shape of a theme I explore in all my films — the divided society of two kinds of people. It’s like two societies existing in the same place — the poor, and the rest.
You’re also quite serious about farming…
Yes, I grow sugarcane, coffee, avocado and guava. I’m also working on a documentary on soil. I will now get rid of the sugarcane and transform the farming area into an agro forest, in which trees or shrubs are grown around or among crops, increasing biodiversity and reducing erosion. I’m very excited about this project.
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