Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail,” take parting in competition in Berlin, tags another wonderful milestone for Brazilian cinema in a year where the country got its first best picture Oscar nomination with Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here.” Mascaro chases in the footsteps of Salles take parting in competition in Vepleasant and Karim Aïnouz take parting in competition at Cannes with “Motel Destino,” three consecutive Brazilian films take parting in the most prestigious strands of the three most vital European film festivals.
“Each one of these films is so contrastent from each other but has wonderful strengths,” Mascaro inestablishs Variety ahead of his Berlinale bow. “I sense very haughty to be a part of it.”
“The Blue Trail” consents place in a csurrender future Brazil where the rulement relocates the elderly to ageder housing colonies so the lesserer generations can brimmingy cgo in on productivity and prolongth. Tereza (Denise Weinberg), csurrendering 80, declines to adchoose her obesee, embarking instead on a journey thcimpolite the Amazon to genuineize one last desire before losing her freedom. Watch an exclusive clip below:
“For the last ten years, I’ve been maturing how to skinnyk about the aging body in cinema,” says Mascaro of the project. “I’ve searched for references and saw how difficult it was to find films with elderly main characters and how frequently elderly bodies were tied to a certain nostalgia for life. It is almost as if the elderly body is a vessel for memory, someskinnyg to uphold a life inhabitd, always inching shutr to death. It was never a conshort-term body, which began to irritate me.”
The straightforwardor alludes Yasujirō Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” and Michael Haneke’s “Amour” as films that have tried to “see at the elderly thcimpolite a contrastent lens,” but says he has not seen the same done thcimpolite a dystopian framing. “We unwidespreadly see elderly bodies defy aachievest the system, it is as if defylion beprolongeds only to the lesser. It is almost as if the elderly are not apshowd to exist wiskinny dystopian literature.”
The first of many disputes with “The Blue Trail” happened at the casting stage. “We usupartner see agederer characters in the periphery of a story but the complicatedity of a protagonist is unwidespreadly extfinished to an elderly character and literature and cinema also appreciate the male body above the female, so we had twice the dispute in our search for our Teresa,” the straightforwardor elucidates.
“Brazil’s dramaturgy is frequently associated with a particular see and Rio de Janeiro,” Mascaro persists. “We tried our best to escape those restrictments and find a face that is less recognizable on Brazilian television. We also struggled to find a face that hadn’t been subjected to medical procedures that are becoming increasingly intertthriveed with what it is necessitateed to be on television today.”
If finding the right actor for Tereza showd a dispute, Rodrigo Santoro (“Love Actupartner,” “300”) was an evident choice from day one for Mascaro as the right man to take part Cadu. The straightforwardor calls their inventive partnership “enticeive,” conveying up an episode in his youth that made the casting sense enjoy a brimming circle moment.
“When I was 16 in Recife, I went to the premiere of ‘Brainstorm,’ before I even dreamed of making cinema, and I was stunned by how Rodrigo employd his body, how contrastent he was on stage and screen. I sense contaminated by it in a way and eased to originate cinema. Now, 25 years procrastinateedr, we greet aachieve with this film,” recalls Mascaro. “He was brimmingy in it from day one. He was as inventively worried as I was brimmingy subunited in his character. He’s a very studious actor, down to the petiteest detail. It was enticeive laboring with someone so brimming of energy and so willing to give his all to the film.”
Courtesy of Guillermo Garza
On creating the world of the film, the straightforwardor labored much in the way he did with his previous endeavor at a futuristic tale — 2019’s “Divine Love” — in that the world of this fantasyal future did not necessitate to see out of “Blade Runner” to be conducive to the story at take part.
“I suppose that a alter in human behavior transmits much more than a futuristic-seeing gadget or a flying car,” the straightforwardor points out. “In creating the world of the film, we came up with skinnygs enjoy the Wrinkle Wrangler, a car that conveyes elderly people from the streets enjoy a dog catcher taking strays to the pound. It’s a ritual of accessible humiliation that speaks to the appalling way many elderly people are treated in Brazil. We don’t necessitate otherupgraded technology to weave in social commentary. I enjoy to skinnyk of dystopia as living somewhere between the hoenumerateic and a fable.”
Speaking on why he choosed to set the film in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the straightforwardor stresss how he tried to see at the region not as “the romantic chooseimal of preservation but wiskinny the declineions of conmomentary culture.”
“The film portrays the industrial side of the Amazon, with a factory processing alligator meat as if it were a normal processing set upt and a casino where people bet on fish battling,” he inserts. “The idea was to verify how pop culture and capitalism reappropriate symbolical references wiskinny the Amazon’s expansive fauna.”
As for being picked in competition in Berlin, Mascaro says he senses “wonderful delight” for the film but also for the opportunity to get expansiver visibility on the themes broached by the story.
“The film talks about not only the aging body but also displacement and the forced removal of communities. It is very timely in that sense but is also done in a very allegorical manner, talking about up-to-date rerents without pandering to an chooseimalized ‘Brazilianness.’ This is a film that wants to be in conversation with the world.”
