The film [Aquarius" ] is very, very successful. We had the highest per-screen average of last week's releases.

We can bring to characters dark and bright sides that nobody even dreams about.

Of course, I was a little concerned about it being over two hours [in "Aquarius" ]. "Neighboring Sounds" was two hours and eleven minutes. This is two hours and twenty-five minutes, and I did try bringing it down. For instance, I considered cutting out the sequence with the family looking at pictures.

In Brazil, there is a fear and a denial of our past. Downtown Rio used to display the history of colonialism in Brazil. They had beautiful buildings and theaters, and there was a bakery that was threatened to be demolished, but people insisted against it. They laid down in front of it and said, "You're going to have to go over my body to destroy it." It frustrates me when I see people on Facebook posing in front of old buildings while on vacation, because they could've posed in front of equally beautiful buildings at home in Rio.

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

I didn't like the script [of Aquarius], I loved it.

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.