Director Paulo Carneiro, who on Thursday premieres the documentary “Via Norte” and has two more productions in the pipeline, says that filmmaking is a struggle, a constant job that requires “great resilience”.
In an interview with the Lusa news agency about the Portuguese premiere of “Via Norte”, Paulo Carneiro stressed his desire to make a movie in which “what matters are the people” and the stories that have to be told, even if the projects are underfunded from the start.
“I want to make films that the people who take part in them enjoy watching. I don’t want to be in that ‘arrogance’ of making a very particular movie, far away from those people. For me it’s a cause-effect, it doesn’t make sense [otherwise],” he said.
Already shown at festivals, “Via Norte” is Paulo Carneiro’s second feature film, after his debut with “Bostofrio, où le ciel rejoint la terre”, shot in Trás-os-Montes in search of answers to a family story.
Like “Bostofrio”, “Via Norte” is also a “super-low budget” film, but the director says he doesn’t make “a standard-bearer out of it. Movies are what they are, it’s not a weakness, it’s a strength of the movie”.
“At the time I couldn’t get funding in Portugal and I found a way to study in Switzerland for six months on a scholarship so that I could make the movie. It was a production strategy. The film was originally intended to be shot in France, but production issues led me to Switzerland,” he said.
It was there that he filmed portraits of Portuguese emigration, based on his childhood imagination of his father’s village in Trás-os-Montes and a certain fascination with the idea that the success of Portuguese emigrants was legitimized by the type of cars they owned.
“I was very fascinated by the cars that emigrants brought to Portugal [on summer vacations] and there were already myths that some people rented cars to return to Portugal and to show that they were successful,” he explained.
In “Via Norte”, with shots in garages, parking lots, fuel pumps, almost always at night and always with cars in mind, Paulo Carneiro hears emigrants talking about missing Portugal, money, prejudice, family, those who no longer want to return to their country of origin and those who dedicate everything to work.
“I’m sure it’s not a movie about cars. It’s a movie that talks about all the other issues inherent in emigration and which are the order of the day. […] It’s an object of desire, but at the same time it’s an object that represents success,” he said.
For Paulo Carneiro, the car “also serves as a form of integration, because there are groups that have cars, some modified, some not, and they get together and it’s a way of socializing”. “In Portugal, people get together to watch soccer, and here the car is used for these meetings,” he said.
“Via Norte” was shot between 2019 and 2020, had its world premiere in 2022 in Switzerland and is now arriving in Portuguese cinemas, while Paulo Carneiro is finalizing two projects.
“A Savana e a Montanha”, which he called a “social western”, was shot in Covas do Barroso, in the municipality of Boticas, and follows the people’s struggle against the possibility of lithium mines. Twice rejected by the Instituto do Cinema e Audiovisual, the project went ahead with Paulo Carneiro’s own financing, until he was able to get funds and production support from Uruguay.
“Nha Terra Nha Força”, which is being shot and edited simultaneously, in co-production with Switzerland and Uruguay, “is about a group of young people who live in a village at the foot of the island of Fogo [Cape Verde] and who resisted the eruption. […] It’s a movie that goes against the idea that everyone in Africa wants to come to Europe,” he said.
Producer and director Paulo Carneiro believes that making movies “is a struggle, an everyday job”: “It’s very difficult, it’s constant work, you can never think that it’s already guaranteed”.
Paulo Carneiro was born in 1990 in Lisbon, grew up and lives in Pontinha, on the suburban bangs of the capital, where he shot the last scene of “Via Norte”, in his car, inside an old market that had already been dismantled and which had references to the revolution of April 25, 1974.
With this final scene filmed in Pontinha – where he was also photographed by the Lusa agency – the director bridges the gap between the suburbs of Switzerland and Portugal, between those who live and work on the margins there and here.
“My parents come from humble families, they only had primary education and I was always instilled with the idea of working. I never romanticized it. I also didn’t know how far I could go. Nowadays I think I’m somewhere, I don’t know where, but it comes from a constant and great resilience,” he said.