We talked to Brazilian director Grace Passô about her feature film debut, Our Secret [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Grace Passô
scheda film], which is competing in Berlinale’s Perspectives section and which focuses on a Black Brazilian family in the city of Belo Horizonte who are trying to cope with a recent loss.

Cineuropa: Let’s discuss the origins of the story. Were there any autobiographical elements to it? What gave you the urge to make this film?
Grace Passô: I wrote this story for the theatre in the early 2000s. I've been working in theatre since I was 13 years old, so it’s a natural stomping ground for me. Six years ago, in 2020, I rewrote this story with a movie in mind, thinking of it as a feature film. So it's a story that I revisited after many years and it's about family, in particular, family secrets, so it’s about memory too. Family secrets involve memory and shared intimacy. And it's impossible to write about family without thinking about your own experiences. But this definitely isn’t an autobiographical film, though there have been experiences that have shaped certain parts of it, such as loss within my own family.

Our Secret seems very much inspired by Latin American magical realism. What were the literary and film inspirations for the movie?
As you say, fantastic realism is very influential and it’s a very well-known feature of Latin American literature. And the texts I’ve written in my life have always been characterised by surreal situations. I decided to film the movie it in a realistic way; the acting is realist in texture but the situation is surreal. There’s a movement called Afrofuturism, which speaks to something that I really like and which I always repeat. It claims that some communities already live in a surreal world. And, somehow, I feel that, as a Latin American woman with all the history that Latin America brings, and also as a black woman with all the history of black polarisation around the world. Surrealism is present in our lives and there are several situations in our history that have most definitely been surreal. I love that idea, that reality is really abstract. At this point in time, Brazil is celebrating its carnival, an event which transcends the idea of realism. In this sense, surrealism sometimes speaks louder than reality, or it can convey the dimension of our reality much more than any naturalist or realist texture can. In terms of inspiration, there are so many references that I always lose track when asked about it. What I can say is that I really like the productions coming from the Filmes de Plástico movement, and films made in Recife, that often bring a strong surrealist flavour.

You said: “I always imagined the camera getting lost in the rooms in the house”. There are lots of scenes shot on a hand-held camera in the film, even if it’s really subtle sometimes. How did your camerawork evolve as you were filming?
Obviously, there was work carried out beforehand, with my cinematographer, where we thought about the house as a very important character, because it holds the secret, the delirium, the crux of the film. But the house is also a metaphor; the house being built is a metaphor for this family's trajectory, an attempt to rise again after the father's death. In the first part of the film, the characters are always very isolated, which is intentional. So the idea was always that we could see through the cracks a little, we could see their different worlds until they met, momentarily. But the script is always like a lake which we can dip into. It's always a reference. But when I started making the film, things changed a lot, especially when we were deciding on the location and the space where the actors would meet. At these points in the process, it’s important to create life, truth, logic. When a living human body arrives in a living, physical space, the script becomes something to refer to, not to follow. And that's how it was for us.

Speaking of actors, you have an acting history which has won you a few awards. How was it to be a feature film director, knowing what it's like to be an actress on the same kind of set?
When I work in theatre, I also direct. So there are some forms of conducting, of mise-en-scene, that are already part of my life. I love what’s involved in acting, and it brings my film direction to life, because I think and direct with the body as a matrix. Acting forces you to think about the other; it’s an exercise in empathy. You relate to another actor, to the film direction, to the lights, to the set and to everything else. So, for me, film direction is also about relationships.

Are you working on any new projects?
I have a lot of ideas but I don't have any concrete projects in development right now. This year, I debuted with a play, an opera. I also acted in a film that will debut at some point between this year and next. All these different activities and changes are good for me. I believe that movement is life.