Cannes 2010 Interview: Felipe Braganca – Director’s Fortnight’s A Alegria (The Joy)

A Alegria (The Joy) tells the story of 16 year-old Luiza. In Rio de Janeiro’s summer, she is assigned to take care of her cousin, João, whose foot gets shot. The movie deals with the modern culture, politics, friendship, utopia and the pursuit of happiness. A Alegria (The Joy) preems in the 42nd Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Anny Gomes: How did the initial idea come about and how did this become a story relevant for you to share with an audience?
Felipe Bragança: The movie is a dream about utopia and the courage from the juvenile imaginary of the leading character, Luiza, a 16 year-old girl. To us, the movie is a form of expressing through images an enthusiastic reshaped look of the reality, turning against the melancholy and the nostalgia of the artsy cinema of the 90’s and still common in the beginning of XXI century.

Gomes: How the partnership between Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande took place?
Bragança: We went to film school together at UFF, in Rio de Janeiro. We directed two short movies (Por dentro de uma gota dágua e O Nome Dele) and Marina edited my third short movie, Jonas e a Baleia. After two years working separately, we started working together again in 2008 in order to shoot Coração no Fogo’s Trilogy, which The Joy is the main and most important part.

Gomes: The cast in this movie are mostly new actors. How much improvisation was involved? Tell me about the casting process.
Bragança: The group of leading role actors is mostly non-actors chosen after one year of research and auditions with teenagers in Rio de Janeiro. Tainá Medina, who is 16 years old, plays the leading character Luiza and she has never acted in her life. Junior Moura, that plays João, the missing cousin of Luiza, is Felipe Bragança’s cousin in real life and only worked as an amateur actor. We put these non-actors, amateurs and some professional actors together such as Maria Gladys, the 70’s diva of the Brazilian’s Underground Cinema. About improvisation: we do not like to work with improvising as a liberating way to show “colloquial and realistic” dialogues, but as a loving way for the actors to go around the script and memorized lines while having an opportunity to experience different emotions.

Gomes: Felipe, as the screenwriter, is there much of your personal experience in the movie?
Bragança: The script mixes reflections of my youth, around my 20’s until today, when I turned 29 years-old, relating to memories of my childhood and teenage years living with my family in Queimados, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The characters, images and situations come from my experience during these years.

Gomes: How long did it take to write the script? What about the shooting process? And the post-production?
Bragança: Felipe wrote the script throughout 3 months in 2006. From that, it suffered corrections until one month before the shooting, in 2009. The movie was shot in four weeks. The post-production took 7 months.

Gomes: Rio de Janeiro and Brazil, in general, is recognized by its beauty, beaches and Carnaval. In the cinema, violence, poverty and the slums are usually the focus of Brazilian movies that are best known internationally. The decision of not giving priority to this sort of theme was premeditated? There was fear of talking something different than the usual?
Bragança: We would not say that it was a premeditated decision. I believe it was a demonstration of respect towards our power as authors and movie makers. We do not fear going against what is usual, we believe in the truth of our characters and what the movie can become on screen.

Gomes: The movie had a cost of $400 thousand dollars. Is it hard to get money to sponsor the movie industry in Brazil?
Bragança: Most of the setback of a movie production is related to lack of sponsorship rules, and where lies the division between funding big commercial projects and small independent production companies. Knowing how to work with small budgets and working with a creative production team, it is possible to make big movies in Brazil without having a $ 1 million dollars budget that would be considered “low budget”. If there was a line of more consistent planning focused on a bigger number of movies made by small production companies and costing around $350 and $500, we are sure that the most beautiful Brazilian movies would come from there.

Gomes: How are you dealing with being selected for Cannes? After this publicity, what do you expect to receive from the public and critics?
Bragança: We are dealing with serenity. Our expectation is that more people can watch the movie in this manner. And we hope people can realize there is this surge, this movement of young filmmakers (between 25 and 35 years-old) getting into bigger projects out of the mainstream cinema. We are honored of being the directors of the first film within this small new movement, produced by a small independent production company and still make it to Cannes.

Gomes: What feedback do you expect from the public outside Brazil after watching The Joy?
Bragança:We do not want to predict anything. Maybe a feeling of surprise and excitement.

Gomes: What are the future plans and projects regarding cinema?
Bragança: We are working on finishing the movie Desassossego until maybe September, which would end the Coração no Fogo’s Trilogy – made with Karim Ainouz (our “older-brother”) and other young Brazilian directors. After this, I have two scripts ready to direct, The River`s Bend (a juvenile adventure that is being produced by RTFeatures) and The Yellow Animal (an erotic fantasy produced by Duas Mariola, Arissas Multimida and Sara Silveira). Marina plans to dedicate herself to a documentary about audiovisual memories of the Brazilia population, to be called AfterImages.

Felipe Braganca’s A Alegria (The Joy) shows in the Director’s Fortnight.