You see all these old buildings [in Rio] going down or catching fire overnight, and it is so sad. I am very connected with these buildings because they are our history. It is the only one that we have.

Nobody who comes out of the movie [Aquarius] focuses on those [sexual] scenes, because they are not the heart of the film. They are a consequence of the story, but I don't remember hearing audiences talking about them afterward. They came out discussing themes of resistance, history and memory. They're talking about the beauty of the self and how it can become demolished.

["Aquarius"] it had a bit of a rocky arrival in cinemas because we were given the 18+ rating, which did not make any sense in terms of the Brazilian rating system for a film like this.

The rating [of "Aquarius"] was eventually brought down to 16 after the third appeal. Everything blew up after the second appeal because the press picked it up and spurred suspicions of persecution.

The ruins of classic movie theaters are a personal obsession of mine, and I've made a couple of documentaries about it.

The reaction I got from Sônia [Braga] in less than 48 hours after I sent her the script [Aquarius] was so genuine that it left me stunned. Often when you show people scripts, you get polite, absent-minded reactions, as well as exclamations of "What the f - k is this?".

I live in New York, and Clara lives in Recife. The character is Brazilian, and as I read the script, I felt like Kleber [Mendonca] had been spying on me in order to create this role [in Aquarius]. Clara and I have different backgrounds. I come from an intuitive world, and she's an academic, but when we got together, we really became one. There are many times when I'm watching the film where Clara will say something, and I will find myself agreeing with her. It was the first time that I had this weird sensation that the character I played is so me, but yet it's so her.