It may have taken pioneering explorer Amyr Klink a hundred days to cross the Atlantic, but it took Carlos Saldanha almost three thousand days to bring his story to the big screen. After working on the saga for nearly a decade, the director of “Ice Age” and “Rio” is finally bringing “100 Days” to audiences as the Brazilian closing premiere of this year’s Rio Film Festival.
“100 Days” is adapted from Klink’s book “One Hundred Days Between Sky and Sea” and tells the story of Klink’s groundbreaking 1984 solo journey from Africa to Brazil across the South Atlantic on a small rowing boat. The film stars Filipe Bragança as the explorer, “Emily in Paris” star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as his mother Asa, as well as Felipe Camargo and João Silva as Klink’s father and brother.
talk with Diversity Ahead of the premiere, Saldanha recalls that veteran producer Paula Consenza brought the project to her before the pandemic. The director was working on “Ferdinand” at the time and was considering directing his first live-action project. “When this project came to me, I thought it was a great coincidence because I loved the book so much,” he says. “It was a very formative read during my teenage years. When I got the script, I re-read the book and loved it even more. I knew it deserved the big cinema treatment.”
When Saldanha joined the project, he reworked the script with Elena Soarez and Thais Tavares. The pandemic years slowed down the development of the project but gave the creative team more time to work out the details of the adaptation. “For me, it wasn’t enough to tell the story of this hundred-day adventure,” says the director. “I was very interested in what was going on in Amyr’s head, what she was doing as she spent so much time out at sea, rowing alone.”
Carlos Saldanha, courtesy of Fábio Braga, Pivô Audiovisual
“I talked a lot with Amyr, her family and her friends, and did some very in-depth research to understand who this person was and what made her tick,” he adds. “Amyr was great for the freedom she gave us. She helped us figure it out without having to explain it.”
Of course, the key to the film’s success was casting, and Saldanha found the perfect Klink in Bragança. “We had a very interesting casting process because it was quite a small ensemble, so they all had to be in synergy,” says the director. “Filipe was incredible. Very hardworking and dedicated. We met for coffee and it was love at first sight. He worked hard for the role; He went on a strict diet, watched every video of Amyr, read the book over and over again… And the results speak for themselves. He carries the weight of the film on his shoulders. He was a champion.”
As for Leroy-Beaulieu, Saldanha says it was a very happy coincidence that the leading French actress spoke Portuguese fluently and was interested in working in Brazil, while also taking on a complex role: Klink’s mother was Swedish and spoke Portuguese with a distinctive accent. Moreover, it had a “very specific look”. “I was so impressed by how great her Portuguese was,” the actress’s director recalls. “And she looks a lot like Amyr’s mother, so it just felt right. She came to Brazil for two weeks to shoot and it was great.”
The ambitious production presented many challenges, but none more so than shooting the complex water scenes that gave the film its blockbuster feel. “It was a great learning process for the whole team,” says the director, who built the water tank used for the film. “It was the first time we were working with such a large tank and we were learning as we went. We spent a week in the ocean, but we needed the tank to shoot the night scenes, the storm… It was an added element to the production.”
“We finished filming two years ago and spent all our time intricately working on the special effects,” he continues. “We had a team in São Paulo and a team in Finland; it was a very, very cool co-production model. It was great working with the team because they all fell in love with the movie. It was challenging, but it was worth it because the movie looks so beautiful.”
Filipe Bragança and Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, courtesy of Fábio Braga, Pivô Audiovisual
After building a successful career in animation in the United States, when it came to making films in his native Brazil; Saldanha, whose credits include the “Ice Age” movies, “Rio” and “Ferdinand,” said he began looking for opportunities in his hometown a few years ago. “With Netflix’s ‘Invisible City’ and ‘100 Days,’ I started breaking barriers in the Brazilian film industry because I didn’t know a lot of people in the industry here and I didn’t have a lot of experience working in the Brazilian market,” he says.
“This homecoming was a wonderful opportunity,” he adds. “This was a very good thing for me and I was very well received. My experience further increased my desire to continue working in Brazil.”
As for the conclusion of the Rio Film Festival, Saldanha says he was “extremely happy” to see “100 Days” play at the majestic Odeon theater and reunite with the cast and crew. “I also hope that Brazilian audiences will watch the movie in theaters because the movie was made for theaters. There are a lot of great adventure elements in the movie, so I think people will enjoy seeing it on the big screen.”
“Another thing is: I think we need to tell the stories of our heroes,” he says. “We are used to watching foreign heroes on the screen, but we need to see ourselves in our cinema and understand that we have heroes too; this is a heart-warming thought for me.”
“100 Days” is produced by Ventre Studio and is in co-production with Buena Vista International, Boipeba Filmes, Trema Filmes, O2 Post and Total Post. Buena Vista International, owned by the Walt Disney Company, handles distribution.