Rio Remains Beautiful: A Conversation with Felipe Casanova
© Rio Remains Beautiful, film still.
Felipe Casanova is a Swiss-Brazilian filmmaker. He lived in Rio de Janeiro until the age of nine, when his mother returned to Switzerland with him and his brother. He spent the rest of his youth in Geneva, where he lived until he was twenty, before moving to Belgium to study cinema, a decision that marked the beginning of his artistic journey.
Felipe describes his choice to move as both a desire for independence and a need for a new environment. Geneva, a small and orderly city, had started to feel limiting. Drawn by intuition and the promise of a more vibrant atmosphere, he chose Brussels, a city whose artistic energy, warmth, and touch of chaos immediately resonated with him. It was there that he found the creative spirit and freedom that continue to shape his work today.
Koen Vanderschelden talked to Felipe during Film Fest Gent, where his film O Rio de Janeiro Continua Lindo won the award for best international short film.
This interview contains spoilers of the film. Read with caution.
Koen Vanderschelden (KV): What inspired you to make cinema?
Felipe Casanova (FC): I started doing cinema when I was 16 years old. As a kid, I always created stories in my head when I played with dolls. I always created a setting, like many children, I guess. Cinema is a format that really grabbed me. It showed me how you can express yourself through image and through a story. I really like editing too. I like to create a language that is not just an oral language, right. The passion developed over time. When I discovered it, that was it and nothing else. I just kept feeding that passion until today.
KV: And you learned different techniques. For this film, you did a big part of the writing, producing, filming and editing yourself.
FC: Yes, it’s funny in a way, because I was never a very prepared person. Even in school, I was always more freestyle. For a presentation, I never prepared much. I usually did things quite last minute. I think my films sometimes are something where I tried to value that too, this more homemade, more spontaneous side. As if they were almost sketches that end up being beautiful works. I started learning while doing, valuing that gesture. It’s a bit more manual, following my own intuition. I really like filming because you are the first eye, you are the one who captures. It’s a very immersive process. I like that process. That’s why I got into documentary film making. It’s the immersion, in direct contact with what you are filming, although I’m also slowly re-appreciating what can be done with fiction. For a long time, I thought it could become very artificial, a creation too distant from reality. Now I’m trying to see how the two communicate and how they can coexist. I think the aesthetics in this film also evolve in that sense.
KV: Where did the idea to make the film come from?
FC: I had never made a film in Brazil, and I really wanted to do something there. I took my Super 8 camera, which I had already used for my previous film. It’s a camera I love, as I really like to work with fragments. I also work with images and unsynchronized sounds. For me, it makes the editing more interesting than with a normal camera, where you have synchronized sound. And I think non-sync is a fertile ground. There’s also something about the scarcity of the image. You have to work with what you have, so you have to use it.
I went with that camera to Rio, and I had the intuition of a film: a letter from a mother to her son during Carnival. I had already worked with correspondence in my previous film. When I began to develop the idea, I thought of a film as a letter, something small and short, also because I didn’t have money. It wasn’t a film I had been working on for a long time.
KV: You went to Brazil three times, to film.
FC: Yes, but the first time I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. I discovered what it would be like, when I met Ilma, who’s the mother in the film. I was already thinking of a working mother. And that led me to meet several drink sellers during Carnival. They are part of that celebration and really nourish the party, as they are working, living a different reality from the people who are there to party. I met Ilma and we had a really good connection. She felt what I needed and said: “I think you should meet Bruna.” And then I met Bruna. And it’s Bruna who inspired the film — Bruna, who lost her son when he was shot by the police.
KV: That’s already a very different perspective on Carnival compared to what Europeans think it is. Carnival has often been used to showcase racial democracy, co-opted by the state to depict Brazil as a tourist attraction. Afro-Brazilian culture became the core of Carnival’s image. However, while Black Brazilians’ art was celebrated, they remained marginalized in society, facing discrimination, poverty, and exclusion from power. Carnival gave them temporary visibility but not real equality. As you are well aware of those different aspects, what is the essence of Carnival for you?
FC: Carnival is many things. I think what I wanted was more to show another face of what it is. The film begins with you there during Carnival, thinking it’s a party, and then to break that image of just a popular festival of drunk tourists, to bring a more political side. I wanted to talk about the roots of carnival and samba. Samba actually comes from a place of sadness, from colonization. Samba is about transforming something sad and ugly into something beautiful. It’s showing that side and showing all those ghosts of society that today have more and more visibility. Carnival brings up many racial issues often criticized by conservatives and the far-right. Brazilian culture is very much rooted in African heritage. I wanted to show those symbolisms, without falling into something too didactic, too explained. It worked through poetry, through elements, symbols, and poetry, which are all connected to spirituality. Umbanda, Candomblé — those are religions of African origin. It’s all there, somehow present. I think that was it: I wanted to show what this celebration today carries the struggles of the past, while they still continue. These are things from the past that are still present today. There’s still a place for them; it’s a space where they are gaining visibility. I think that was important to show, something that people from outside of Brazil might not imagine.
KV: After watching the film, I thought a lot about two other films I’ve seen: Rio, Carnaval da Vida by Leon Hirszman, and Ôrí by Raquel Gerber. Your film also brings up this political part of Carnival. For Europeans, Carnival is a party, it’s those women selling cachaça, it’s people parading at Sapucaí (the most famous carnival arena, designed by Oscar Niemeyer). But at the same time, I saw an image of Marielle Franco (a Black, feminist, Brazilian politician who was brutally assassinated in 2018) there. Carnival is political. I really liked that part of your film.
FC: Indeed It was very much about what already exists, because I’m not inventing anything. Carnival is that. It’s full of contradictions. There’s a lot of inequality. Brazil is a very contradictory country. It has a huge Black population, more than 50%, and at the same time it’s one of the most racist countries.
KV: Rio is a city of contradictions. Why do you think Rio is so complex and paradoxical?
FC: It’s a wonderful, marvelous city, and everyone who'sfrom there has that love for Rio. Even though the city has a lot of problems, all deeply rooted in and related to power structures. ("A Cidade Maravilhosa” (The Marvelous city) is the official nickname of Rio de Janeiro, a designation that reflects the natural and cultural beauty of the city. The epithet became popular with the Carnival march ‘Cidade Maravilhosa’ from 1935, which became the city's anthem.)
KV: Talking about the title of the film, O Rio de Janeiro Continua Lindo (Rio Remains Beautiful). It has a very big ambivalence, originating in a very famous song by Gilberto Gil, one of Brazil’s most important artists.
FC: Indeed. In Portuguese, the title carries irony, acidity, in a certain way. Because of the song, everyone in Brazil recognizes O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo. It’s very much about that postcard image of Rio — its wonders, Gilberto Gil, celebration, the parties, etc. At the same time, there’s an irony, because the film brings something else. It brings a horrible side of Rio, an ugly side — which is this massacre against the Black population, against innocent young people who, because of the color of their skin and where they live, end up being murdered. And then those murders get covered up. It’s something horrible for the whole favela population, who run that risk all the time and have friends or family members who are being killed. So the film brings that story as a B-side. There’s always been that postcard image — the beautiful image of Carnival — and on the back there’s the text, and that text brings the back story.
KV: Were you thinking of showing the B-side from the beginning?
FC: When I had the idea of the mother’s postcard, I already had the idea of a working mother who, for me, would bring a contrast with the party. It’s about someone who is not there celebrating, not able to have all that lightness. Someone who’s working hard, because life is complicated for certain people. So I wanted to show that, to have that contrast. Before I traveled, when I was thinking about the postcard film that came to me about the mother and son, I thought of the film Ghost Tropic by Bas Devos. That was a starting point that led me somewhere else. In Bas Devos’s film, it’s a domestic worker who falls asleep on the subway, wakes up at the last station, and has to cross all of Brussels walking to get home. It’s a very delicate, very beautiful film, but what struck me a lot was that at the end, you see her daughter in the tropics, I don’t know where, on an island. The daughter is having fun thanks to her mother’s work.
I found that contrast very strong — between the mother’s work and the daughter reaping the rewards from it, without being conscious of it. That was the starting point. But then it led me to another place I hadn’t imagined. When it presented itself to me, there was no way to escape it. Because the theme was the most relevant thing possible given the current situation in Brazil and elsewhere in the world, with police violence growing everywhere. When I met Bruna, everything fit together. That she was writing a letter to her son was something that almost surprised me, how destiny sometimes arranges things. That she had paraded with Portela (one of the most famous samba schools) a few days before, it all came together. I met Bruna at the end of the first trip. Then I gradually built the film, and it was really about how all this would come together. That’s also why I chose to create a spokesperson, a composite character of several mothers I had met and spoken to, who had also given me letters to inspire the film. I found it more correct to create a fictional spokesperson. That is what gives the film its hybrid nature.
KV: You know three worlds: Brazil, Switzerland, and Belgium. Your film has premiered at a festival in São Paulo, in Locarno, and now we are here. How has the reception of the film been different?
FC: Here, in Belgium, I already knew it would be more of a surprise, that the issue of police violence would come more as a shock. Although I think it’s something that, unfortunately, is happening more and more here too. There have been several cases of police violence in Brussels lately. There’s very strong structural racism here. It’s evident, there’s no denying it. But in Brazil, I was more curious and apprehensive, because there everyone knows. Every Brazilian knows how it is. I was curious to see if they would be like “Oh, obviously, we already know” or how my own positionality would be perceived. Because I know how important lugar de fala is nowadays (‘place of speech’, a concept from Brazilian Black feminist thought that states an individual's social position shapes their perspective and what they can speak about with authority. It was coined by Djamila Ribeiro and recently got translated to English as ‘Where we stand’. Go buy it in your local book store). I kept thinking about it, but, to my surprise, the film was very well received in Brazil. For example, there was a guy sitting next to Ilma during the screening, and when the film started, he hadn’t realized it was her in the film. When the letter began, he said, “Hmm, I think her son died, huh?” In Brazil it’s a very coming thing: You see a Black mother, probably from the periphery, speaking in a letter, and a Brazilian already knows what probably happened to that son. But I think the film has all these layers of Carnival and this authenticity of giving voice to these victimized mothers. It’s a discourse — a struggle they’re carrying that’s still not very popular. They are there every day, fighting, but they are not heard much. If you go to the mainstream media, it’s never about a Black person from the favela who was murdered. So, I think many people felt represented. It was very emotional in Brazil, because people there are very much more affected by this. It was very moving, very, very emotional, and that made me feel very happy and relieved.
KV: Now that your film has gained more recognition (I talked to Felipe the day after he won the award for best international short film), is it your objective to open this debate more, about structural racism and police violence? Do you have a political objective with your film?
FC: For sure. What I still really want to do is to organize a screening in Rio, where all these mothers will be present. We’re waiting for the opportunity to do that, where they will have greater visibility. But I think the film itself is already political. It will follow its own path, and I’m there as a representative, in a way, of that struggle.
The struggle is not mine, I participate in my own way, which is by making this film. I don’t have the legitimacy to speak for them either. I’m trying to bring visibility to their struggle. I observe externally, with my privileges. And I think that’s it: cinema has that power to touch people’s hearts, to move them, not just through facts or numbers, because here we’re so used to getting horrible news all the time that it doesn’t even affect us anymore. It’s as if it doesn’t enter our hearts anymore, it doesn’t affect us. Cinema on the other hand, has that power, and the voice of a mother is something we can all relate to.
KV: Continuing with that, the name of this magazine is Rephrase, and the meaning we had in mind is double. One part is about rephrasing actual sentences, and by doing so supporting emerging writers who like to experiment with the written word. But also, to rephrase the social debate, to change the point of view, , to try to change the texture of society. How do you try to rephrase the world with your work?
FC: Wow, that’s a hard question! I would like a fairer world, a more equal world, where meritocracy truly exists, not just as a farce. Because we know they say it exists, but in reality it doesn’t, or not in the sense it should. A person isn’t born with the same opportunities as everyone else. I want to advocate for a world where everyone is born safe, where public security exists to protect us and not to attack us, where no one is in more danger than another. I want to show that state of revolution — that desire for revolution, for revolt. It’s to show a revolt that I think we’re needing, a greater awareness, like, let’s act now. And I think it’s in that act of action that I want to place my films, right there, to put them into that movement.
KV: What struck me a lot about Brazil is the role of art and popular culture in those movements. The central figures in human rights movements are often not politicians, but artists, and that’s very striking. There’s that bond between art and human rights movements. Recently, famous singers like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil and Chico Buarque took to the streets to protest against a law that would give amnesty to the people that tried to stage a coup in 2023.
FC: Yes, but at the same time, it’s almost a bit bitter, because they’re the same figures who were already fighting against the dictatorship in the 1970s, and today they are still the central figures. We need new ones. The film Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) proved in a way that similar things are possible nowadays.
KV: Because in Belgium, at least, I think the role of cultural movements seem to be less political. I find that difference interesting.
FC: It’s true, I hadn’t made that comparison before. Brazil has a very strong national culture, with lots of local artists as central figures.
KV: Yes, and Carnival — going back to your film — is also part of that national popular culture.
FC: Brazil is almost a continent. It has a very rich history. And that’s it, Brazilians are very happy when they see their culture being valued abroad, because we know how good it is, we know how rich it is. It’s not me who says it, it’s the people who do. Brazilian cinema is gaining a lot of attention. And even though there’s still a lot of bad things, a lot of struggle ahead, there’s still magic. There’s still beauty, there’s still enchantment. And here (in Belgium), people need to be more enchanted.
KV: That’s a beautiful way to put it. It goes back to the title of your film. Thank you for this interview.
© Rio Remains Beautiful, poster.
Koen Vanderschelden works as a policy advisor in Ghent. With Rephrase, he aims to diversify the Flemish media landscape by pushing new voices and narratives to the center stage, envisioning a more just society.