QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM THE RED SEA

Paolo Marinou-Blanco is a US-born writer, producer and director, of Greek and Portuguese origins (and still intimately connected to both cultures). He is now on his third feature film: Dreaming of Lions premiered just last month in the Critics’ Picks section of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. The dark comedy tells the story of a Brazilian immigrant in Portugal diagnosed with terminal cancer, starring veteran Brazilian comedian Denise Fraga in the lead.

He has now travelled to the 4th Red Sea International Film Festival with his movie. This is where he sat down with the founder and editor of DMovies in order to discuss the darkness and the levity of his work.

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Victor Fraga – Please tell us about your journey from Tallinn to the Red Sea.

Paolo Marinou-Blanco – We were selected by Niki Nikitin for the opening slot of the Critics’ Picks section, and here I received an invitation by [Festival Programmer] Kaleem Aftab. And he incorporated Dreaming of Lions into the Festival Favourites section. I have known Kaleem for a few years, and he absolutely loved the film.

My script was selected for a script pool in the industry section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival three years ago. It won the best script award. The project was also selected for Works in Progress in Cannes this year. The Tallinn team – particularly Triin Tramberg – had really accompanied the project on its entire journey. Premiering in Tallinn was like coming back home. It was a really wonderful experience!

VF – Did the temperature of the audiences in icy Tallinn and arid Jeddah change?

PMB – Yes, it did actually. One of the things that surprised me is how young the audience was here, in Saudi Arabia. It was a sold-out screening as well. There was a lot more laughter here, which both surprised and delighted me. The people somehow connected with the dark humour perhaps more vocally than they did in Tallinn.

VF – Where you surprised that your film appealed to Arab sensibilities?

PMB – I was very happy, and pleasantly surprised. Particularly at how vocal audiences get here! I hope it’s because the humour is universal, and the issues it deals with – death, illness, loneliness – are international enough.

VF – What are your views on the assisted dying, particularly in the light of Almodovar’s The Room Next Door [2024] and the Assisted Suicide Bill, right now in British parliament?

PMB – I had an experience with my father, who went through a protracted period of illness and at a time when assisted suicide was not legal in Portugal. It is fortunately nowadays. So I’ve seen firsthand just how difficult it can be, you know, for people who don’t want to go through those last stages, as they get closer to death.

VF – Did he attempt to take his own life?

PMB – No, he was in hospital for a long time and he just kept being kept alive. So he had no opportunity to do that. But I’m very much for assisted dying or, for the legalisation of euthanasia, obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t have made this film. The fact that it’s only legal in about 10 – maybe now 11 with the UK – out of almost 200 countries in the world, means that we still have a lot to change.

VF – Was your father able to laugh at his predicament?

PMB – Yes, he was. That’s one of things that inspired me to make the movie! He was always making fun of the nurses, sometimes teasing us, his relatives.

VF – Self-deprecation?

PMB – Not really. He was just teasing my mother and I, trying to lift our spirits. In hospital, he was singing the Brazilian song Maracangalha by Dorival Caymmi [the cheerful lyrics describe a person determined to party on, even if they have to do it on their own]. So decided to use that song in the film. Denise Fraga [pictured below] helped me to identify to song. I started singing the song and she said: “That’s Dorival Caymmi’s Maracangalha. Let’s try to use it in the film!”. In the end it became quite a central element.

VF – Your film is an international co-production of three countries, Portugal, Spain and Brazil. Please tell us how this came into being.

PMB – I always knew that I wanted the protagonist not be Portuguese. Although there’s a very big Brazilian community in Portugal, the fact that she would not have been born in that country would make her a little bit more isolated. This would facilitate her relationship with another loner, the co-protagonist, Amadeu, played by João Nunes Monteiro. So, the fact that Denise isn’t Portuguese naturally led me to want a Brazilian actress. Brazil has got amazing actors, right? And then I was very lucky to find Denise.

VF – And how did you find her?

PMB – That was an incredible stroke of luck! It was during the pandemic. So, Denise and her husband, Luiz Villaça, who, as you probably know, is a very well-known director in Brazil, were locked at home – much like the entire world. So they started doing these videos, mini films, that were part-poetry, part-theatre, part-improvisation, and Denise was the protagonist. The part she was playing had a lot of the energy of the character that I wanted, and that was on YouTube.

VF – You are Greek-Portuguese. Please tell us how your own cultural sensibilities shaped your script and your film

PMB – Dark humour is something that runs quite strongly in Greece. Particularly in a lot of Greek cinema that I admire. So that definitely influenced me.

VF – Such as?

PMB – Yorgos Lanthimos. I very much like his films. Greece, and to a lesser extent Portugal, have a certain tradition of combining levity and pain. The idea of dancing, singing and laughing away your pain. Both cultures possess that. Plus, the Portuguese have a strong sarcastic streak. Like dry comedy, sometimes it feels almost British.

VF – Similarly to Dreaming of Lions, your previous film Empty Hands [2021] is also a comedy about mortality, about a mortician asking advice from his clients. Is death a laughing matter after all?

PMB – I think that death is obviously a very serious issue. And precisely for that reason, it is a laughing matter. It is laughter is what brings us courage, in my opinion. I think the harder the subject, the more difficult it is, the more we should employ laughter as a defence, a weapon, a soothing balm, whichever works for you. But definitely, a reaction, a resistance to sadness. It’s a different way of looking at death.

I wouldn’t say death is a laughing matter, but instead that laughter is something that can give you lucidity about death and about life.

VF – Our dirty journalist Jeremy Clarke, who reviewed your film in Tallinn, wrote: “the piece takes effective potshots at both the exploitation of people for profit – perhaps we should simply name it as capitalism – and the positive-thinking, self-help industry”. Do you agree? Is it ok for capitalism to mandate survival at all costs?

PMB – No, I don’t think capitalism has the right to mandate that, and I completely agree with what Jeremy wrote. And I was very happy that he seized upon that, because that was definitely my intention. I wanted to criticise the pressure to be happy in a superficial way that we have nowadays, which I strongly believe is entirely for profit reasons. And I also think that the wellness industry has become a profit machine with absolutely no regard for real quality of life or for actually creating what they claim to want to create. It’s really just another business. And when you see that applied to real human suffering, I think it’s unconscionable and unethical.

VF – So is it okay not to be okay?

PMB – That’s right. Yes, it is [laughs]. And it’s okay to laugh about not being okay. And to use that laughter as a source of strength. I think it’s Mark Twain who wrote that famous quote: “the human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter”! Is that right?

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Paolo Marinou-Blanco is pictured at the top of this interview, snapped on site at the Red Sea by his interviewer. The other image is a still from Dreaming of Lions.