Women at my age they are making love, they are feeling sensual, they flirt, they have boyfriends, they have a sexual life. They are just not being represented in the movies.

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 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?".

To be naked or even making love in a scene to me is very important if this is a movie about a couple or sensuality. It's a sort of moralism to think that this shouldn't be seen in the film.

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."

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

The only thing I know is that we came from the stars, and that we have the same material as the stars. That's all that I know. Everything else I don't know.