Victoria Luxford – How did you first come to be involved with the project?

Eduardo Boccatelli – Bijupirá has been with me for years, in different shapes and thoughts. I kept returning to it, trying to understand what the story wanted from me. It wasn’t a sudden beginning, more like a tide that kept coming back. When the right people appeared and the possibility finally revealed itself, I understood that it was time to make the film. My memories of the sea, my family’s stories, my desire of portraying the feeling of the outsider, all converged into this project. That’s when I knew I was fully involved: when the film started demanding to exist.

VL – There are a lot of unspoken elements to the film, particularly the complexities of the relationship between Reinaldo and Tomé. Was that written down, or discovered in rehearsal or filming?

EB – Most of what matters between Reinaldo and Tomé isn’t spoken, it rises through silence, through the way one looks at the other without knowing exactly why. I wrote the emotional foundation of their bond, but its subtleties came alive only on set.

Heraldo carries the weight of a man shaped by the sea, someone who feels more than he can articulate. Enzo brings the openness of a boy searching for a place to anchor himself. Their chemistry didn’t need many rehearsals, it emerged naturally once they were together in that landscape. The script held the structure, but the sea and the actors revealed the rest.

VL – The chemistry between the two leads in the film’s opening moments is very compelling. How difficult was it finding the right two actors for the project?

EB – Finding them was a mix of instinct and luck. Heraldo led the casting process and understood immediately the emotional balance we needed. When Enzo walked in, we both felt it at the same time: it’s him. We just glanced at each other and we knew it. He had that confidence and ease that only Bahia gives, and a natural ability to inhabit Tomé’s fragility. Heraldo, meanwhile, is an actor who speaks through quiet gestures. He carries whole storms in a single glance.
Together, they formed a connection that felt lived-in, even before the camera rolled.

VL – Cinema history is filled with stories of projects that struggled with the unpredictability of filming on water. How did you plan for this challenge?

EB – I think that if you have to film at the ocean, you have to think like a sailor man: you can’t plan against the sea, you plan to surrender to it. Since we didn’t have the budget to build indoor tanks and to work in a controlled environment, I had to optimize my forecasting abilities to manage our way around weather. I’ve been surfing for almost 30 years in Rio, and I’m very familiar with its weather pattern. Salvador’s weather was not the same though, but it held some similarities that helped me make some decisions. We chose Praia de Tubarão for its unique geography, where the water stays shallow far from the shore but still offers an open horizon. Even then, the ocean dictated our schedule. The weather changed constantly, a storm shut us down, and we returned two weeks later to finish. We worked with natural light as much as possible, letting the sea decide what the film could be that day. In a way, the unpredictability became part of the narrative’s honesty.

VL – Did filming on water adversely affect the budget? Was there anything you had to cut back on as a result?

EB – Shooting on water always stretches a small budget, but instead of cutting back, we shifted our priorities. We embraced what the location offered and focused on what truly mattered: the performances, the light, the relationship between boy and sea. Working with a lean structure forced us to be precise. Every decision had to serve the emotional core of the film, and most of them did. The ocean gave us scale we could never afford otherwise.

VL – How difficult was it getting the remarkable underwater sea life shots?

EB – I’ve always dreamed of diving with whale sharks and filming them. The best places to encounter them are in the Pacific (Mexico and the Philippines) and in Indian Ocean (Maldives and Indonesia) but a trip like that would have cost as much as, if not more than, the entire budget of the film.

Because of that, I decided to work with what we had and what we could dream. Together with Fabrício Araujo, our visual effects coordinator, we created a hybrid approach: a careful composition blending VFX work with images from aquatic photographers who have managed to capture the majestic presence of these beings.

The magic truly happened in the collaboration, in respecting the ocean’s scale while finding a cinematic way to let that sense of wonder flow into the story.

VL – Can you discuss the process of working with Fernando Martins on the score, and how it supports the tone of the story?

EB – The music steps in like a current beneath the surface, revealing what the characters can’t put into words. Fernando understood immediately that the film didn’t need music in order to explain emotion, it needed it to be a character itself. When the characters would lack in emotional resources, the soundtrack would jump right in and say: I’ll take it from here. What began as a score became a soundscape, something that breathes with Tomé’s uncertainties and expands the silences. Fernando treated the ocean not as an environment, but as a second narrator.

VL – What are the challenges of getting a short film seen by audiences, compared to features?

EB – Short films often live in a quieter corner of the industry. You don’t have the same distribution paths, and visibility depends heavily on festivals, community, and persistence.

But there’s also a certain freedom in that. Shorts carry an intimacy that resonates deeply when they find the right audience. You learn to navigate with limited resources, trusting that the film will reach the people who are meant to watch it. It’s a slower ripple, but a meaningful one.

VL – How have audiences reacted to the film so far?

EB – The reactions have been incredibly moving. People often speak about the silences, the relationship forming between Reinaldo and Tomé, and the presence of the sea as something almost spiritual. Some viewers say they recognize their own memories in the film, their childhoods, their fathers, their first encounters with the unknown. When a film reaches people in that quiet way, it feels like a gift.

VL – Do you have any projects you are currently working on, or planning fsor the future?

EB – Absolutely! I have many stories waiting to be made, some already written as feature scripts, others living as synopses ready to find the right moment and partners who can help bring them into the light. The beautiful reception that Bijupirá has had in festivals reaffirmed something essential for me: that these stories resonate beyond their place of origin, that the quiet emotions I try to capture find echoes in audiences far away from where the film was born.

That response gave me a renewed desire to keep creating, to keep shaping my ideas, memories, projections, landscapes, and emotional territories that have followed me all my life. So I’m committed to bringing these new projects forward, step by step, until each one finds its own tide, its own partners, and its own moment to meet an audience.

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Eduardo Boccaletti is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still from Bijupira.