I always told my team, "You have to believe that you are not in front of a computer, but that your canvas is a piece of paper. You have to believe this even if you have a computer in front of you."

The world's geography is not realistic. Geography is not real. Borders are only closed to people but they are open to products. There is another type of geography outside of this matrix. Because of this we noticed we were talking about much more than just Latin America. That was very important to put the film on another level. Based on this idea, we knew that we were not in this world any longer.

Each film has its processes. It doesn't mean that all animated films have to be like "Boy and the World," but creators have to have total freedom. There are films that are born with the purpose to sell. They are still admirable films with great artists and great visuals, but we wanted to use a more radical approach to create art. That's what we tried to do.

"Airgela" is "Alegria" backwards and "Alegria" means "Joy" or "Happiness." This is a fundamental word in this film. It's very important. Symbolically "Alegria" is crucial word in the creation of this project. Although it wasn't present from the beginning, as we were working on the music it became symbolic.

That was a very natural process because as I was creating the animatic I added music clips as reference of the kind of music I wanted in the film. These were from musicians like Naná Vasconcelos and Barbatuques, the body percussion group.

I feel that joy is the basic emotion of life and of human beings. It's what supports everything. We are here to be happy. We are to enjoy "alegria."

We were in another planet and we were reaching for something closer to a fable. It was something fabulous. I started looking at the film as if it happened in another planet and that allowed me even more freedom.