Article by: Qasa Alom
Rio Breaks is a film about the colourful, dangerous and poverty stricken favelas of Rio and the two teenage boys trying to escape them through their dreams. On the surface, the picture seems to simply be following a well trodden path epitomized by the iconic Cidade de Deus in 2002. However, director Justin Mitchell looks closer at another aspect of favela life culture, away from the glamorization of crime, to tell the powerful real life story of 13-year-old Fabio and 12-year-old Naama.
subtitledonline.com caught up with director Justin Mitchell whilst touring England to find out some of the reasons why he made the documentary…
What did you set out to achieve with this film?
I saw a story that I thought was worth telling, so in terms of achievement - from an independent film making standpoint - we wanted to get people to see it, learn of the story and see another side to the favelas. I'm a surfer, but I've also worked in documentaries for a long time - both my parents work in it and I used to work in music documentaries - so I've always thought that surfing would be a good world to explore. Having said that, though, I wanted to have a little twist on it and not just make your average surfing film. So, the idea behind it was to take the aesthetics and the trappings of a ‘surf film’ and find a story that we could tell using those aesthetics - almost veiling it within that to bring them closer and pulling them into a social documentary.
It definitely came across like that. How did you find this story then?
Well, I guess I was in the right place at the right time. Vince Madeiro, the writer, has produced pieces for numerous surf magazines and I was always on the lookout for a surf story that would be the genesis of my film. Then one day I spotted something that Vince had written in a magazine called The Surfers Path that looked at the Favela surf club. Ironically, very few people, perhaps maybe one person from the film itself, were actually in the article as well, for a number of reasons, such as the club always changing hands, but when I read it, I instantly knew that this was what I was looking for.
So then I immediately contacted Vince through the internet and basically said: “We have to make this film!” At first Vince was rather apprehensive, he’d never made a film before, but I was just constantly saying, “Don’t worry about it…let’s just meet in Rio.” So, then we were out there just filming or talking to various people and that was the foundation of our film.
Earlier on you mentioned the “surf aesthetic.” What did you actually mean by that?
I love all the classic Surf films, Endless Summer…the film’s from the ‘70s, etc. They were all shot in 16 mm. The way you would shoot those films is that you’d have like a hundred meters of film and then, when you’re out there, you have to take your time with it because you’ve realistically only got the chance for about 7 takes - you’ve really got to be sure that it’s something you want to be shooting. Then you flash forward to the ‘90s, and you have films from people like Thomas Campbell, who brought that style back and shot it with 16 mm as well, so I really wanted to recreate something like that. In fact, I sort of went in with my mind made up of how that’s the way I wanted my film to look, because it gives you a new love for looking at the images and gives it the surfing feel.
Then, though, I actually realised soon after the first trip that it would be very expensive! So, what I did was look for the best alternative at the time for me, which was a 35mm lens adaptor that goes on the front of your HD camera - so we were shooting in HD, but using two or three old NIKON lenses and that was a very big decision that we made early on. I must admit, at the time, it was a slight risk, but a judgement call that I think paid off. You needed to have the aesthetics right, to show the love and care in each shot for the surfing, the landscapes and the story, so I think it worked pretty well to give it that veil.
You mentioned feel there as well, and I suppose I can’t let you escape without talking about the City Of God feel to the picture. Was that intentional?
Yeah, you’ve really hit the nail on the head there. In the early days, in order to get funding, we were pitching it as “Endless Summer meets City Of God,” but it was only really a way of getting the money or attracting people to it.
After the film, people’s views of the favela were all very singular because what was shown in City Of God was all that they knew about it. What we had in mind was showing that actually there was so much more to it, and even so much more than we’ve touched on in the film. We wanted to take care to show other aspects of everyday life down there, that maybe City Of God didn’t look at, because there’s a lot of people in places like Rio that perhaps don’t love the film as much. So, we tried to use surfing to show that there are actually a lot of other positive things that are going on in that community.
And then how did you find the two boys, because on screen they had fantastic chemistry, as well as possessing great personalities that highlighted different aspects of human nature?
Well, I wouldn’t even say that we found them, because they found us really. That’s the best way to describe it. I think Fabio is such a great character; both of them are such intelligent and interesting people, so I suppose they saw us with our cameras on the beach and they just knew they wanted to be a part of it. What was interesting, though, was that I actually thought that we would be looking at kids who were a little bit older than Favio and Naama – kids who are like 15 or 16, because at the time I was of the impression that they were the kids with clear distinctions, who were either in a gang or surfers, whereas the 12-13 year olds were kind of on the brink of it.
What we found, though, was that at the other age – much like teenagers anywhere, I guess, really – is that they really will just do whatever they want to do, and if they’re not interested in you one day then you’re not going to get much help from them. Sure, they might want to help you a couple of days later, or when they’re free, but it’s much harder to structure something with them, whereas with Fabio and Naama, we had their complete attention, and they really wanted to be a part of it, so that really helped a lot. I think they enjoyed that for once the spotlight was really on them, because they were just kids that nobody really cared about or paid much attention to day to day, so to go from that to having camera’s on them all the time - I think they really got a kick out of that and a good buzz.
When I was watching the film, you could certainly see that. The surfing was great but the standout beacon in it really was the characters, they really added an extra dimension to it. Did you notice this at all when you were filming it?
Oh yeah, for sure. We had a number of other characters that could easily have been the focus of the film, or people who could have had bigger ‘roles’, I suppose, such as Maicon, who does a load of flips at the end and eventually joins the circus. There were a few others as well, but all of them personality-wise didn’t really bring it to life in the same way as Flavio and Namal did as a dynamic duo.
For instance, I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, it was always Vince who did the talking, but even on the very first day of meeting them both, I could tell exactly what they were saying, just by their energy and the way they were relating to each other. There was something really special there between them, and I think that it’s really powerful to have that in a film because you can get some sort of deeper meaning - and it’s easier to relate to them without having to speak the language.
And since then, do you think that relationship’s still there?
Well, I can’t really go into details here, but what the film does show by the end is actually the reality of Brazil. A lot of times in the media, or our world and in films, there’s a huge draw to just paint things in black-and-white, good and bad... The reality is that, so much of everything that happens in this world is actually in the middle. People choose different paths all the time, it’s just part of life really and it kind of fits in really neatly to what I wanted to explore throughout the film and through surfing. QA
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