Everybody else is going to react differently to the film [Aquarius], but what I love about it is that both men and women are going to react to it because they will find themselves represented.

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.

When was it that people decided as a society that your body is in one place and your sexuality in another place, something like a hat, or a coat, that when you leave home you hang it and when you come back home you say, "Ah! Let's wear my sexuality! I might wear it tonight"? It is something that belongs to your body.

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

I think of a movie as a human body. You can feel the pump of the heart and the blood going through the veins when you watch that scene.

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.

It always surprises me when I see the director's versions of films released separately, long after the film's theatrical run.