If you take away money, if you take away the houses and things, who are we really? What is love really about? What is it to love each other? Why do we stay together, and why do all the kids split? All these questions I have really deep inside of me.

I'm not saying that we need more stories about people of a certain age, we just need more great stories about people.

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.

["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.

Sônia Braga reacted in a beautiful way to the draft I sent her, so we just made the film ["Aquarius"] as I had written it. Emilie [Lesclaux], my wife and producer, told me, "This is not a two-hour film. This is going to be longer." And I said, "Well, let's try and make it work, whatever length it is."

It makes sense that somebody told you that you made the film from your perspective as a father.