Sundance Interview: Pedro Freire on ‘Malu’ and Paying Tribute to his Mother

Playing in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Pedro Freire‘s Malu is a fiercely acted drama about a fading actress living in a Rio de Janiero slum. As she tries to struggles to build a thriving community, her relationship with her daughter and mother becomes increasingly fraught. Ahead of the film’s world premiere, Awards Radar caught up with Freire to talk about the real life inspiration behind the story and living out his Sundance dream.

Shane Slater: Malu is such such an incredible character. And we learn at the end that it’s inspired by your own mother, which is surprising because the film centers women. Could touch on the background of this story?

Pedro Freire: My mother has always been the most important intellectual and artistic influence for me, because she was a very unusual mother. She gave me a lot of cinema and books to watch and read when I was really young. She showed me many important adult films when I was a kid, and she gave me books. But at the same time, she was a very untraditional mother. She was not so caring, so nurturing as the normal mother and traditional mother.

So it was always a very big question in my life, you know? Who is my mother? The big thing that I want to try to understand, was my relationship with my mother. Everything was nice with my father and my sister. But with my mother, it was always a huge interrogation.

And then I decided that I wanted my first feature film to be about her, because this was the main issue in my life. And when I decided that, I started to think that maybe I should do the normal biopic where we show the reality as it was. But really early, I understood that I didn’t want to put myself in the film. I started to write that, but when I wrote the character of Pedro being an asshole with her, it was like, “Oh, he’s trying to have some redemption on screen.” When I tried to make Pedro be nice and gentle to his mother, it would be “Oh, he’s trying to say that he was a good kid, a good son.” So I didn’t want any of that. That doesn’t interest me. I want to watch like a fly on the wall.

So what I did is that I put my sister’s character, but not with her name. My sister is Isadora, but I created Joana, which is kind of a mix of Pedro and Isadora. So some things in the film happened to Isadora and some things happened to me. And so I tried to mix the two experiences there. And there are many things in the film that really happened in real life. But there are some things that I created to better tell the story.

SS: Your cast is so excellent and there are scenes where it feels so electric, like an intimate theater experience. How did you approach directing these actors?

PF: Thank you for that question. That’s exactly something that’s really important for me to talk about. I am a great believer of directing actors. I really like directing actors. I give classes on directing actors in Cuba every year. So in the Cuban film school, and also in Brazil, I have given many classes on directing actors. I love this subject. I read Stanislavski when I was 16, and the director that I most admire in the history of cinema is John Cassavetes. So I really like directing actors.

And so for this film, I use a technique that I stole from Cassavetes, which is rehearsing a lot, but never ever memorizing the text in rehearsals. We used a lot of improvisation in rehearsal, and saved the moment of memorizing the text for shooting. So when we arrived at the shooting, the actors knew the scenes really well from improvising then a lot and they started to memorize like the week before shooting. And then for the first time, acted in the scenes with memorized text with the camera rolling. That’s the technique, that we save the freshness of the scene for the shooting. We rehearse a lot with improvising.

I loved working like that, the actors love working like that. And I think the result is on the screen, you know? Maybe you won’t like the film, but you can’t say that you don’t like the acting. Because it’s really fresh. It’s really powerful. These actors are amazing.

SS: One of the most intriguing characters for me is Tibira. Could you touch on the importance and significance of that name in general, and in the context of the film as well?

PF: I love this character and I love this name. I’ve known this name for many years, and I always wanted to use it in a film because it’s so powerful, what it represents. Tibira was an indigenous man who, in the colonal time of Brazil, was homosexual. And he was killed by the Jesuits because he was homosexual. And so he became kind of a symbol for the fight against homophobia in Brazil, and also against the phobia towards indigenous people in Brazil. So it kind of conveys the two prejudices against indigenous people and homosexuals in Brazil. And so Tibira was this hero, and recently, Tibira was elevated to the status of hero, by the left wing government. So it’s really strong for me that exactly when we are launching the film, Tibira becomes a hero in my country.

SS: The setting really has such character. How did you create the sets and the community?

PF: This is an interesting question, because we are trying with this film to represent the house where I lived with my mother when I was a teenager. In the same favela. So we were really trying to have this feeling that Malu is living in a place where she doesn’t belong, you know? So she was trying to build a huge house with a theater, and this nice little garden, and she couldn’t, because he didn’t have enough money. And all the environment around her began to become a favela. So it’s really difficult for her to live in this place. She’s trying to have a dream that she can’t have, you know?

So we were trying to find a perfect location for the house, but we couldn’t find the perfect location, because we needed some very specific situations where there is this house without a roof. And outside the house, there is this garden, but there’s mud in the floor. And there’s also this very little shack where Lili goes to live in very precariously. And also there is this other room where Tibira lives. So it was so specific that it was impossible to find.

So what we did is that we just found a house without a roof and we built out the external sets. So the room where Tibira lives, was built. And the very little room where Lili lives was also built from scratch. It’s made of wood and it’s really great. I love the production designer’s work there because it’s really precarious. You just feel like, “What the fuck! She lives in there? Really?” And that’s exactly what the granddaughter character says.

SS: There are some darkly funny moments in this film. Was that intentional, considering it’s such a personal story?

PF: Yeah, I think, for example, Malibu’s diagnosis scene. I think that’s exactly it, Malu is capable of laughing in middle of the mud, you know? She’s laughing in the middle of the diagnosis that proves that she’s going to die. And I think the beauty of this character is that was exactly as it was in real life. I was the one to give her the information you’re going to die. I didn’t say it like this, but you have that disease that we both know means you’re going to die. And then she started to laugh a lot, crying, laughing, because she just had the ability to capture the humor in everything.

So yeah, I think that’s the character. She wasn’t mature. I think sometimes I feel that it was almost obvious that she was going to die young, because it was too much energy, too much power to survive until she was 90. She was like James Dean, you know? These huge stars that just die young, because they are so powerful that they burn before the end. Malu to me, was like that. Like a meteor. And the laughing was part of this.

She was amazing. I mean, everyone who knew her was amazed by her. It was impossible to be at her side without being really amazed by her humor. Also her angriness, because even when she she was not really angry at me, as I said, she was a complicated mother. But she was really angered by injustice in the world. When she saw for example, a policeman beating someone in the streets. I saw my mother, go against the policeman and push him. She just went mad against any injustice. So yeah, she was complicated and beautiful.

SS: Heading into Sundance, is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to about this experience?

PF: Yeah, I am really looking forward to connecting with the audience. My main goal is to connect with the audience. I said something once that I think that if people leave the room feeling empathy for these characters, I will be happy. Because that’s my main goal, that they feel empathy for the characters. I don’t care if they liked the film or not. I care that they leave saying, “Wow, Malu and these people moved me, empathy.” That’s the word for me.

I’m really anxious to go to Sundance because of course, it’s a very important festival. But it’s specifically important to me. It’s not the same as if I was going to Venice or Toronto. Both beautiful, great, important festivals. But to me, personally, Sundance is very moving because I was once a very young, aspiring filmmaker who watched a lot of films. And when I was watching a lot of films in Brazil, in the DVD stores, there was always this symbol Sundance Film Festival that told me this is going to be honest, an interesting film to watch, Not only very interesting films, but also films that I can make. That’s very specific, and I think that’s important.

I’m moved right now saying that, because it was this feeling that really moves me. It was like this feeling that these films are films that I may aspire to do one day, because they are independent. They are not The Avengers, or The Matrix, you know? So when I saw these films from Sundance, I thought this is the kind of film I want to do, and probably will be able to do. So I really connected to them. And now I’m there! It’s amazing. I’m really, really moved. When I learned for the first time that I was going to Sundance, I really actually started crying. I was really crying a lot because I was like, “Okay, this is perfect. I was working to arrive at this point.” This is a very pivotal moment in my life. I really sobbed.

I also have a lot of work because I’m bringing with me three feature film projects to try to present to producers there, with my producer Tatiana Leite. So it’s going to be great to also have the opportunity to meet meet new producers and people.