Brazilian director Sergio Rezende (whose The Battle of Canudos screened in Panorama earlier in the week) is flying straight from the Berlinale to London in search of British actors to appear in his new film, The Emperor and the King, a $6 million epic about the 19th-century Brazilian financier, Barao De Maua.
"It's the story of a self-made man. He was born into a very poor background, went on to become the richest man in Latin America, but was bankrupted when he took on the might of the British Empire," says Rezende. Maua, he points out, was a benevolent capitalist, who helped build Brazil's first highways and put lights on the Rio streets.
Rezende wants to cast Peter O'Toole as Maua's English business partner, Rothschild. He is also keen to recruit Peter Postlethwaite, who starred in his 1991 Mozambique-based TV drama, A Child of the South. ("I want to have Pete in this film, but now he is a big star, so it may be difficult to get him," Rezende acknowledges.) Paulo Betti (who has worked many times with Rezende, most recently in The Battle of Canudos) is already lined up to play the title role. "We start in April, shooting three weeks in Liverpool and then ten weeks in Brazil."
The Battle of Canudos was the most successful Brazilian film of last year, attracting an audience of 660,000 at the cinemas and an audience rating of 35 million when it was broadcast as a TV mini-series on the Rede Globo TV network. Rezende admits he was surprised by its reception. "I thought Canudos would be a very difficult film for ordinary audiences. It is not light entertainment at all, but I suppose Brazilians wanted to know about their history - and the film's mix of religion and politics is explosive."
Despite its success at home, the film had not been seen outside Brazil before its Berlinale screening. "We have to conquer our own audiences first and then prove that our films can travel," says producer Mariza Leao, the former director general of Rio Film. Even across the rest of Latin America, she points out, there is not much appetite for Brazilian fare: "Most other countries on the continent speak Spanish, not Portugese."
Still, she believes that the presence of Canudos in Panorama and Walter Salles' Central do Brasil in the main competition signals an upturn in Brazilian cinema's international prospects. GM
[Home ] [Content] ] [The Team ] [Comments ]
