I like visual arts, and what I love doing is participating in the making of it.

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

People have reacted to the length of "Aquarius" in very positive ways. For example, at the beginning, you have people in a car on the beach at night. One character says, "I'm going to play you this great track." She pushes in a cassette tape, and they listen to about 45 seconds of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." You can actually see the pleasure registering on their faces, but it takes time, and audiences have appreciated that.

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

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.

Ultimately, you just have to do what feels right for the film. It really helps when you have great collaborators like my editor, Eduardo Serrano, who kept telling me various scenes should be longer.

I think anybody who was ever saddened by a movie theater closing would be able to understand this film [Aquarius].