Academy Award Submission for Nomination Best Foreign Language Film from Brazil: ‘Little Secret’ Interview with David Schurmann
The touching and engaging “Little Secrets”/ “Pequeno Segredo” opens like a flower. In fact, flowers and butterflies are metaphors for the fleeting but beautiful and bright life of a young girl whose secret, shared with three women becomes a beacon of love for the audience.
Based on a true story lived by the director David Schurmann himself, who, for two-and-a-half years lived on a sailboat with parents, his two brothers, and his adoped sister Kat, I was most curious to know more about his life.
DS: I grew up on a boat sailing around the world. With the opportunity to see and experience incredible moments, such a life also made me aware of one important fact: how chance encounters can change our lives.
My first contact with filmmaking occurred practically by chance, when I was 13. I was able to convince my parents to buy me a camera and then, when going through the Panama Canal, I shot my first documentary film. It was there that I discovered my passion for telling stories through film.
My parents and two brothers have sailed the world to 30 to 40 different countries. I lived on a ship for six years , then on land, then my parents continued another 10 years. For 20 years I have been making docs that show challenges but don’t focus on problems.
Throughout all my years of shooting documentaries, I always imagined that one day I would take a shot at directing my own fiction film. But I wanted to take this step forward with a story I knew well and identified deeply with, so that it would be true and honest. A strong story, capable of provoking thought and emotion, and who knows, maybe even change people’s preconceived ideas. I believe films are able to give rise to questions and transform something within all of us.
I never thought that I would find this story so close to home, within my own family — and that Kat, my adopted sister, would become the main subject of my first fiction film “Little Secret”.
Adopted by a loving family after facing the loss of her parents, Kat (Mariana Goulart) led a life full of adventures, sailing around the world. Now in her teenage years she is trying to fit into a “normal” life on land — something that proves to be much harder than she expects. After discovering a secret that threatens her life, Kat wonders if her dreams are still possible.
The keeper of the secret, Kat’s adoptive mother Heloisa (Julia Lemmertz) is a strong, loving woman, a dedicated mother who struggles to maintain the family together in the face of an unpredictable future.
In a separate story, but interlaced with that of Kat and her family, Jeanne (Maria Flor), a beautiful young woman from the Amazon region of Brazil, falls in love with Robert (Errol Shand), a New Zealander and discovers that her possibilities are infinite — but fate has plans of its own.
Robert’s mother Barbara (Fionnula Flanagan), a stern, cold Englishwoman, is used to getting what she wants. When the past comes calling, she sets out on a journey to rediscover love.
The journeys of these three women crosses oceans and borders from Brazil to New Zealand and shows that in a world where people are pulled apart by racism and tragedy, friendship, tolerance and love can still prevail.
SL: It is unexpected how the three stories come together in the end. Was the story scripted this way or was the film edited this way?
DS: The intersecting stories are not told like “Crash” or Babel” because the time frames also change and 13 years are condensed in the 90 minute movie. It was scripted with a little more back and forth, but when I saw the first cut, it was a little too confusing. I wanted the film to open like a flower. At the end it was quite speedy, but the audience knew the story by then, so it works.
I wanted to experiment with the way the story was told. In the end I chose to narrate it out of chronological order, presenting each main character’s story simultaneously.
We alternated moments from the three different storylines, at first without not revealing how they were connected. In this way, as the film progresses, we begin to see how the stories come together, and then, from a certain point onwards, we reveal the harsh reality that unites all these narratives into one single thread.
By telling the story this way I was able to keep spectators wondering how these lives affect each other. As HIV is an invisible antagonist, I was able to decide the right moment in which to reveal the “Little Secret”.
SL: Yes, this is not an AIDS story we have seen before. It’s not about sex or drugs, but about a blood transfusion which took place before AIDS was diagnosed. It’s a completely different perspective told with a beautiful innocence.
DS: The film’s point of view, aesthetics and design were meant to arouse the audience’s curiosity, to get them involved in and fall in love with an emotion-filled story, and to lead them to reflect on how life is meant to be lived. I hope that, by doing so we are able to captivate spectators from around the world with this Brazilian story with a universal appeal.
SL: The work of the DP was exquisite.
DS: The DP, Inti Briones, is shooting “Vazante” next in black and white, so different from the bright and colorful “Little Secret”. We are good friends and share a philosophy of life. You don’t see his “stamp”; he listens to the director. I said I wanted a movie about movement, people meeting, the ocean, even the protagonist is always on the move. I wanted movement until the film stopped; when the secret is told, there is no movement, no music. Just stillness.
And the camerawork depicting the four time periods is also very special. Each time period is shot with a different lens. For the 1980s we used a Russian Lomo lens, for Brazil 1992 we used a Mini Cooke, in 2003 we used a new Cooke lens and for New Zealand, we used a Zeiss lens. The producers at first thought this would be way too expensive, but we arranged each with only two days of shooting and that kept the cost down
This did add a third dimension to the production which usually has two dimensions: the actors and the location.
Inti is known for his work on “The Loneliest Planet”, the 2014 Sundance winner “To Kill a Man” and some 55 films shot around the world with such directors as Walter Salles and Raúl Ruiz. He was voted by Variety as one of the top cinematographers of 2013.
SL: This was a visually beautiful movie.
DS: This is a family picture and I wanted to make it bright. It is told from a brother’s point of view, not a mother’s . My sister’s life was bright; she was life itself. Her illness was not central to her life. When she passed it was like a breeze or a butterfly. In fact, there are butterflies throughout this film.
SL: Yes I noticed in the beautiful opening with the sea, a butterfly kept coming into the picture.
DS: At some point I was afraid there were too many butterflies, but the production designer Brigitte Broch made them quite subtle.
Brigitte Broch is a German-born Mexican Production Designer, winner of the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for “Moulin Rouge” and a nominee for “Romeo and Juliet”, both directed by Baz Luhrmann. She worked on several award winning, critically acclaimed films, such as “Biutiful”, “The Reader”, “Safe House”, “21 Grams”, “Babel” and “Amores Perros”.
DS: I did not want to give into pain. You feel it and see it but I want to show the other side; when you focus on life. The weight of the story is there but it is told in a very delicate way. Kat was like a butterfly; she really lived life and we all worked to make hers an amazing life.
SL: It was a painful subject but it was told with such lightness.
DS: We wanted such an emotional reaction to open the audience.
Read the review of the film Kate Lyra, Director, LATC — Latin American Training Center, Brazil
SL: Tell me more about how this film came together and what was the involvement of Diamond Films.
DS: Diamond used to be Sun Distribution and sold mostly of Latin American television. It is now relabeling to distribute theatrically in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Spain. This is the first time it has invested in a film. The man who headed Diamond in Brazil liked this film. It is not the usual arthouse drama or broad comedy one sees in Brazil; it is not just Brazilian. So he said he would talk to Diamond in Argentina, where they are based. And then we flew in, had a lunch and pitched it to the Argentinians. After lunch we went to their offices, they took 1/2 hour to talk among themselves, and looked at our proposal and with a little more negotiation, we signed a deal for them to coproduce and distribute in Latin America.
They told us certain points they wanted and let us work with full freedom. They gave it a big Brazilian release of 300 prints (there are only 3,000 theaters in Brazil) November 10.
SL: How did the film show?
DV: When we showed the film at the Rio Film Festival, it received a standing ovation. It takes the audience a while after to get out of their seats and to get out of the film’s mood. After the credit role no one gets up; you hear some sniffles. After this happened three times, we realized that the emotion held them in their seats.
SL: Now what about world sales and distribution?
DV: We are now negotiating the rest of the international rights and U.S. distribution. We tested it last year at AFM and it tested very well to for the British, Latin and mixed audiences.
