On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn't a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt.

I have the feeling that I didn't make it by myself, but that I was conducted by feelings that were completely different from those in my previous work. When I start making a film I don't know what I'm doing.

"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.

They didn't need to be specifically South American or Latin American. Instead we discovered we were talking about human beings in general. We realized that these are not issues only pertinent to Latin America: poverty, misery, consumerism, etc.

I'm being sincere and I'm being human. I'm making mistakes or I'm doing things correctly, but I'm being human regardless. I'm talking about my pain and my joy, and I'm not saying it with words but mainly with colors and shapes. That's what I tried to do with the utmost sincerity and humility of a child.

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."

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.