NIMUENDAJÚ wants to preserve the depth of the real character, as made in A WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Ari Folman, Israel/2008), an animated feature film released in Cannes and nominated for the Oscar of Best Foreign Film). WALTZ is a good example of how a film constructed frame by frame, with drawings, can be a quality fiction for adults.
We adopted a method of conduction similar to the WALTZ’s, which is filming and then animating, but with a difference: we did not stand exclusively in a studio, but we filmed, in loco, at the Apinayé’s and Canela’s villages. The German actor who played Nimuendajú, Peter Ketnath (“Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus/ Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures”, a film by Marcelo Gomes) accompanied us in this undertaking, mingling with both people, recreating situations from the plot. The experience of that contact brought a great richness to the film. Rituals, songs and the everyday life at the village were recorded during a month’s journey. After that time, the scenes of Belém and Germany were made in studios in Belo Horizonte.