Os Ultimos Romanticos (The Last Romantics) by João Cândido Zacharias. 2019, Brazil, 13 min., Portuguese with English subtitles. Two young men share different points of view of the same sexual encounter in a public space.

We’ll be featuring two shorts by Brazilian filmmaker João Cândido Zacharias: The Last Romantics (2019) and Sandra Calling (2017). As screenwriter and director, the films show João’s pension for the spoken word as the driving force behind his storytelling. He is currently developing his first feature, a horror film titled The Inheritance.

Do you have a filmmaking philosophy?

“I’ve learned that I have to be faithful to myself and my beliefs, otherwise the film just won’t work. I have to approach themes and issues that really touch me and follow my instincts in doing so. Even in my work as a screenwriter for other projects, I have to find a part of myself in that story. If it comes from somewhere inside the mind and the heart of the filmmakers, it will resonate.”

Who are some of your artistic influences?

“For those two short films in particular, I was very much drawn to filmmakers that use spoken word as their main tool in building their universes, such as Eric Rohmer and Hong Sang-soo, whom I’ve been watching since my early days in film school. I was also inspired by the mumblecore subgenre, especially some of the films of Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg, how personal they can be with a very low budget. But I’m also very much influenced in general by classic genre cinema in general, even if that may not be so apparent from my work.”

What are you watching right now?

“My first feature will be a horror film, so I’ve been rewatching my favorite horror directors, especially John Carpenter, one of the greatest of all time. But I’m also catching up with some genre films of the last few years that I missed. Netflix has recently produced very good genre films, like Wounds, Fractured, Small Crimes… Others that I hadn’t seen yet and were great treats: Come to Daddy and The Lodge. I also rewatched The Loved Ones and The Devil’s Candy, two films by Sean Byrne, an Australian filmmaker, one of my favorite directors from this generation.”

Sandra Chamando (Sandra Calling) by João Cândido Zacharias. 2017, Brazil, 12 min., Portuguese with English subtitles. “Grieving, longing… a downer, right?”

What are some common themes throughout your work?

“I think death is always a theme, in almost every story. Not necessarily death by itself, but death as the ending of something and how hard it is to deal with. I think that is present in both these films, in Sandra Calling more openly, but also in The Last Romantics, in the mourning of a fleeting sexual encounter, in the subtle constant fear of losing each other in a romantic relationship. I have a friend that says that every good film has at least one death, and it’s true, even Mary Poppins has a death at the end.”

What is your filmmaking process like?

“It always takes place in two parts: the writing and the actual directing. Both tend to be chaotic, at least inside my head. I’m at a point in which making a film is also learning how to make a film. I don’t know if someday I’ll get to a point where I can say from the start “I know how to make this film,” but for now, it is always a learning process. And a great part of that process for me has to do with editing. I always start with a lot more than what I end up with.”

What are you working on now?

“I was supposed to start shooting my first feature in a few months, but with COVID-19, it was postponed and I don’t know exactly when that will happen. So I’m trying to use this time to further develop the screenplay and to prepare as much as I can, watching films and putting on paper what I have in mind. I’m also in post-production of a new short, which is a bit easier to do in quarantine, and this week I’ve started writing a new script, for something I don’t know yet what will be – it always starts as a mystery.”

João Cândido Zacharias was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1981 and has a BA in Film from Universidade Federal Fluminense. He created documentary projects for TV and is a screenwriter, having collaborated on several documentaries and feature films. His short, Sandra Calling, won the Felix Award at the Rio Film Festival and was shown in Europe and the US. His next short, The Last Romantics (2019), has been selected to more than 30 international film festivals. He is currently in post-production of his latest short, Nest. In 2020, he will direct his first feature, the horror film The Inheritance.

 This work was presented as part of SHORTS FROM UNDERGROUND, a weekly curated series that highlights boundary-pushing filmmakers from around the world.