Sundance 2024! – An Interview With Filmmaker Daniel Barosa

I’m really good and huge congratulations on your premiere at Sundance. How does it feel after your first premiere?

Daniel Barosa:

It feels amazing. I think the audience liked it. It’s like this instant dance. But at the same time, it has some moments of relief. Like comic relief. It was nice to see how the audience reacted to everything. I think they enjoyed it. At least they told me they enjoyed it. No one comes up to your face and says, that’s a horrible film! Don’t do that again! At least that didn’t happen!

Glen Dower:

So let’s talk about The Shell Covered Ox, of which you are the director and writer. It is based on Brazilian folklore, and then you’ve taken the traditional idea and mixed it in a coming-of-age story, dealing with grief, a reflection on society. Can you tell our viewers what the folklore is about and why you brought it to the modern day?

Daniel Barosa:

Yes, of course. For the folklore, it was created in this region where we shot on the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil. This story is about an ox who wanted to see the ocean and wanted to see the sea. But his owner always fails in his promises. He eventually runs away because he finds out his real fate is the slaughterhouse. So he ran away to the ocean and disappeared into the sea. And then they say at night you can see him walking on the beach under the moonlight, covered in white seashells. So this is an interesting metaphor of how this animal escapes its fate and nobody writes his story. And how this toxic environment around him makes him just disappear, and run away.

I decided to mix that with this story because I had, before the story, wanted to tell about grief loss, in this post-pandemic world, especially in the view of the young generation, and how they perceived it. And this coastal city where we shot the film. It’s the place that I’ve been going to since my wife was born there. So it’s a second home to me. It’s a beautiful small, fishing town. And when I found out about the folklore, I said, oh, this is perfect to work as a metaphor for mixed-up teen angst. It has this rebellious feel to it and it kind of speaks to this generation.

Glen Dower:

The generation you’re speaking of ‘The teenager’…the angst and you give the audience a lot of credit, you don’t hit them over the head with certain ideas. There are certain, very subtle moments that I noticed that were dropped in there. Our main character goes to the music store and they say, we don’t accept cash anymore. But she was able to give them data as payment. I thought that’s the way we’re going, isn’t it? We’re not monetizing anything anymore. It’s data. Then they’re on the beach, the friends. They’re there, but they’re not there. And they say, ‘How’s your mom? I saw her post’ and no one was talking, but everyone was posting and that’s how people communicate.

Daniel Barosa:

It’s nice that you saw these details, I appreciate it, but that’s the idea. It was kind of, for example, the internet. The data thing is kind of like something. It’s happening already in some places. In Brazil, people don’t carry cash, so you’re going to pay by card or you can exchange other stuff for it. But there’s a peak, so it’s a way of paying. I don’t know if that’s where we are going, but there’s a lot of that that’s already happening. I remember also, that the pandemic itself accelerated a lot of social gatherings through the internet. What we’re doing now, actually, talking through Zoom!

So this idea also of these things, doing band rehearsal online. It’s something they could have easily done just by meeting each other in their houses. But no, they do it online. So it’s kind of like something that wasn’t in the story. It wasn’t in the screenplay. I started writing it during the pandemic as well. So kind of, I didn’t know where this was going. And afterward, we were rewriting it, and some things I changed, of course. But some things I kept because I think, well, this makes sense nowadays. They could easily do that. They couldn’t rehearse online because they were not up to walking to each other’s houses or they were too busy with something else. I guess we try to explore that a bit in the film.

After filming and rehearsing with these young actors I understood even more about their generation because they’re actors. They’re also 17, 19, and young. Then we decided to add this actual layer to the film in terms of social media. You see that in intervals between the scenes. So you have TikTok and Instagram posts and stuff like that because, well, that’s how I communicated with them through pre-production. And I thought that was an interesting way to elevate even more on this second layer of this future. This digital future, where we’re going, and how these teenagers communicate.

Glen Dower:

The fantasy element. Again, you imply it, the teenagers are going missing, with the implication is they’re turning into oxen. So is Ox a metaphor for just digital drones, or phone zombies? Or is it open to interpretation for the audience?

Daniel Barosa:

It’s open for interpretation by the audience. On my side, I know how I see it. I do see them walking blindly and just getting lost. But you can see it in many ways as well. But one thing I think that’s key in these fantastical happenings is that you have a lot of teenagers disappearing in this small town. And instead of people researching it or going through it, ‘Okay, so teenagers are disappearing,’ you have them like, ‘Oh, let’s see what the problem is. Is it the health system? Is it the education system?

People prefer this fantastical story. That’s what happened. Yeah. So it’s like this and it’s crazy because I think that’s something that actually could happen if people try to go to these fantastical solutions or fantasy worlds instead of trying to deal with it and trying to fix the problem. So the parents, instead of talking about it or talking to the teenagers, or maybe having psychiatrists and stuff like that, they’re more into this incredible story, this incredible metamorphosis. Which could be happening. I don’t know, maybe they aren’t anti-antioxidant. But I think that nobody’s talking about the other side in the film. So that was a bit of the general idea.

Glen Dower:

On the beach again, your main character goes up to an ox, looks into its eyes, turns to her friends, and goes ‘nah.’ So she is going to check if that ox is her sister, or maybe someone else. So subtle again, you are implying that she would recognize if that was her missing sister or missing friend. That she would know, but it’s not this one. While we are talking about Rayanne, your leading lady Bebé Salvego, what a find she was. She’s just amazing. She just imbues empathy and you’re with her from the start all the way through. And then when she starts playing that guitar at the end, wow…

Daniel Barosa:

I was so lucky. It was the best. Bebé is a singer, songwriter, and composer, who plays instruments like a superstar. And when I was writing the screenplay, I wanted to get a musician to play the lead. Especially because the ending is very important for it to have a very, very strong impact. Of course, an actor can learn how to play an instrument, the bass, the guitar, but it’s a different relationship to have, to know how to hold the instrument. How you handle it. So it’s kind of like, okay, let’s get a musician and see where it goes.

I started looking at the possibilities and I found this young singer, she started her career super early. She has an album she released when she was, I think 16. She’s now 19. I think she was super young. So there’s still a lot to go there. Well, I talked to her about the story, the film, and everything, and she was interested. She had never done fiction. Maybe she shot a music video, or stuff like that, but never actually acted. So it was a challenge for her that she was willing to accept. She likes challenges and she was a natural for us.

She just felt so at ease and just really understood everything, instead of rehearsing. We did have, for example, one actress, for the mother, who we did meet a lot, both of them. But we never actually rehearsed the film or the scenes, we just talked about the characters and then improvised things. So when we got there and to the set, we weren’t just reading the screenplay. We were in the moment because this moment was created, not in the screenplay, it was just let’s let this happen and see where it goes.

It was hard for the editor to put together all these different moments. But it worked. Bebé says so much without even saying anything. It’s a challenging character because she barely speaks and she’s always just staring more into herself. She’s in this thought and in this depression. And she just conveys that with a single look and thats because she was in that place. She was thinking like that. So I think that’s how it worked out a lot.

Glen Dower:

As we know, it’s a short film coming in around fifteen minutes, but you originally had plans for it to be a full-length feature. But if you were getting the opportunity to expand it, what areas would you expand do you think?

Daniel Barosa:

We want to expand the relationship with the family. I think it’s very interesting. They’re like tidbits in the film. How each member of the family deals with the loss and mourning. So you have the father focused on his work. He’s just like, okay, I have to fix things. I have to do stuff. And then you have the mother who’s in total denial and just, no, that’s over. Let’s forget about this. She wants to forget everything and doesn’t want to think about it anymore.

And you have Ben trying to recuperate this memory. Trying to look for his sister and battling. Refusing to let go and how this crumbles the family. And I think it’s something that we want to explore more. All these characters, of course, I want to dive into a bit more into this fantastical rumor and how this escalates in the town. For example, you can imagine this small fisherman town, but it’s also very touristy. There’s a high season. There are a lot of tourists there. So I like to imagine how they will deal with the tourist season.

A bunch of oxen appear on the beach. But the tourists are there and they have the fairs and there’s live music in the streets, stuff like that. And trying to say, don’t worry, there’s oxen there, they’re nice, don’t worry, you can come. Let’s spend your money here in town. How the city hawks will react and how everyone will deal with it. I think there’s a lot of stuff to explore in the film in the future, and we hope to do it soon.

Glen Dower:

I hope so. So this isn’t your first feature, of course, and I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing directors for Cinema Scholars. I just want to talk about when you became a director, we always have this idea that all directors start the Steven Spielberg way, which is you have your Super-8 camera in your backyard. What’s the story of Daniel the Director?

Daniel Barosa:

It’s funny. I know this story, but I’m not comparing it to him in any way. But I did have this camera when I was young, so I always like to tell this story. I always knew that I wanted to tell stories, to create stories. I’m not a good writer. I’m not a good painter. I think I found my art in the camera and the lens, which makes a bit bit of everything. And I grew up watching Hitchcock movies and James Bond with my mother. So they always had this cinephile side. Also, in high school, I had this digital camera so I was just filming silly stuff.

I liked horror films back then and I think that’s just something that teenagers usually start with. And from then on I just would try to slowly understand my language and what I wanted to say. Once I was visiting my father, who used to live in Boston. All my summer vacations, I used to visit him there and I always took my cameras. So I filmed stuff like the city. I filmed this landscape near his house. And then there was this one year that I went in the winter for some reason.

I was visiting my father there in the winter and I saw the same place that I shot before and I shot it again with my camera. I was comparing both of them and I said, wow, this is so interesting to see how it changes and how the camera perceives this different place. And these are completely different seasons. Everything was frozen. And I think that was like, ‘Oh, I want to do more of this.’ To understand the landscape and film these places.

Glen Dower:

And Cinema Scholars, we are also a movie site by movie fans for movie fans, and you are obviously a movie fan. The world is waking up to Oscar nominations. Have you been able to catch up on the movie news?

Daniel Barosa:

I wish you had asked me this question from 2022 to 2023! In 2023 I moved to Los Angeles in August, with my wife and daughter. So from August until now, all the process, the bureaucratic process of moving from another country. And then I had a short film I was finishing. Every year I always watch most of the Oscar movies. I love the Oscar Festival Awards season. I watch most of the movies. This year I haven’t seen that much. I did see some films. I always try to see the international films. I’m very excited.

I haven’t seen it yet, but for the Aki Kaurismäki film, the Finish Director, I think he was a Golden Globe nominee for international films. And I also really liked Poor Things. I got to see that, from Jorgos. He’s a director that I admire and I hope that film gets to be in there somewhere as an Oscar film. There’s a lot of hype with Barbie and Oppenheimer as well, which are great films. In my personal opinion, it’s not my favorite Nolan film. But still, it’s a good movie. I also like smaller films, Memento for example. It’s a matter of taste. I do think he will probably take a lot of awards. He deserved it.

Glen Dower:

A ‘career award’?

Daniel Barosa:

Yeah! That movie did well and he deserves it. But there are others. It’s always like a couple of years late.

Glen Dower:

We’ll see. But it’s always interesting. It’s always good to talk to a fellow film movie fan.

Daniel Barosa:

Yeah!

Glen Dower:

So what’s next for the Shell Covered Ox? Are you going to continue on the festival circuit or do you have a new project?

Daniel Barosa:

The festival the film was in just finished, and we got into Sundance with a work in progress. So then, oh, we have to finish this now. So we’re fresh out of the oven in December, and now we are submitting it to other festivals as well. This year, we’re trying to get a European premiere and screen it in Brazil. It was shot there but it hasn’t been screened there yet. In the meantime, we’re also trying to get the project running for a feature version.

I have a couple of other projects as well feature-wise that I did bring with me from Brazil. A project that I want to do in the States. I want to film that in the United States. So it’s kind of like, okay, so let’s see, this goes now. But there are also other projects that I’m working on in the meantime. So hopefully soon we’re going to be ready with new material.

Glen Dower:

Great. And we might see you at next year’s Oscars!

Daniel Barosa:

Magic!

Glen Dower:

That would be cool. Daniel, thank you so much for your time. I know it’s been an exciting week for you. But thank you for speaking to Cinema Scholars today. It’s been a real pleasure.

Daniel Barosa:

Thank you so much, Glen. It was a great interview. I loved your questions and insight on the film, thanks a lot for watching it!

Read more Cinema Scholars interviews!

THE MIRACLE CLUB: An Interview With Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan

THE WRATH OF BECKY: An Interview With The Directors And Star Lulu Wilson

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