It might have taken pioneering explorer Amyr Klink one hundred days to cross the Atlantic, but it took Carlos Saldanha almost three thousand to bring his story to the big screen. After nearly a decade working on the epic, the “Ice Age” and “Rio” director is finally bringing “100 Days” to audiences as the Brazilian closing gala of this year’s Rio Film Festival.
“100 Days” is adapted from Klink’s book “One Hundred Days Between Sky and Sea” and chronicles Klink’s trailblazing 1984 solo journey from Africa to Brazil across the South Atlantic in a tiny rowing boat. The film stars Filipe Bragança as the explorer, “Emily in Paris” star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu as his mother, Asa, plus Felipe Camargo and João Silva as Klink’s father and brother, respectively.
Speaking with Variety ahead of the premiere, Saldanha recalls veteran producer Paula Consenza bringing him the project before the pandemic. At the time, the director was working on “Ferdinand” and eyeing to direct his first live-action project. “When this project came to me, I thought it was a great coincidence because I love the book,” he says. “It was a very formative read in my teenage years. When I got the script, I reread the book and loved it even more. I knew it deserved a big cinema treatment.”
Once he boarded the project, Saldanha reworked the script alongside Elena Soarez and Thais Tavares. The pandemic years slowed the project’s development, but granted the creative team more time to finesse the details of the adaptation. “To me, it wasn’t enough to just tell the tale of this hundred-day adventure,” says the director. “I was very interested in what was going on in Amyr’s head, what he did while he spent such a long time rowing all by himself, all alone in the sea.”
Carlos Saldanha, courtesy of Fábio Braga, Pivô Audiovisual
“I talked a lot with Amyr, with his family and friends, and did very in-depth research to understand who this person was and what moved him,” he adds. “Amyr was great in how much freedom he granted us. He helped us decipher him without having to spell it out for us.”
Casting was, of course, key for the film’s success and Saldanha found in Bragança the perfect Klink. “We had a very interesting casting process because it’s a fairly small ensemble, so they all had to be in synergy,” notes the director. “Filipe was incredible. He is very studious and dedicated. We met for coffee, and it was love at first sight. He worked so hard for the role; he went on a strict diet, he watched every single Amyr video, he read and reread the book… And the result speaks for itself. He holds 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 prominent French actress speaks fluent Portuguese and was interested in working in Brazil at the very same time he needed to cast a complex role: Klink’s mother was Swedish and spoke Portuguese with a particular accent. On top of that, she had a “very specific look.” “I was so impressed with how great her Portuguese is,” recalls the director of the actress. “And she looks a lot like Amyr’s mother, so it felt just right. She came to Brazil for two weeks to shoot, and it was wonderful.”
The ambitious production presented several challenges, but none more so than shooting the complex water sequences that give the film its blockbuster feel. “It was a great learning curve for the entire team,” says the director of building the water tank used for the film. “It was the first time we were working with a tank that big, and we were learning as we went. We spent a week in the ocean, but we needed the tank to shoot the night sequences, the storm… It was an added element to the production.”
“We finished shooting two years ago, and we spent that whole time intricately working on the special effects,” he goes on. “We had a team in São Paulo and another one in Finland, which was a very, very cool co-production model. It was great to work with the team because they all fell in love with the film. It was challenging, but so worth it because the film looks beautiful.”
Filipe Bragança and Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, courtesy of Fábio Braga, Pivô Audiovisual
As for making films in his home country of Brazil after building a successful career in animation in the U.S., including the “Ice Age” films, “Rio” and“Ferdinand,” Saldanha says he began looking for opportunities in his homeland a few years ago. “With Netflix’s ‘Invisible City’ and ‘100 Days,’ I began breaking the barriers I had within the Brazilian film industry, because I didn’t know that many people in the industry here, and I didn’t have a lot of experience working within the Brazilian market,” he says.
“This homecoming was such a wonderful opportunity,” he adds. “It has been a very good thing for me, and I was very well received. My experience has only increased my desire to continue working in Brazil.”
As for closing the Rio Film Festival, Saldanha says he is “extremely happy” about seeing “100 Days” play at the imposing Odeon cinema and reuniting with his cast and crew. “I am also hoping Brazilian audiences will watch the film in cinemas because it was made for cinemas. The film has a lot of big adventure elements, so I think people will enjoy seeing that 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 screen, but we need to see ourselves reflected in our cinema and understand we, too, have heroes—this is a heartwarming thought for me.”
“100 Days” is produced by Ventre Studio in co-production with Buena Vista International, Boipeba Filmes, Trema Filmes, O2 Post and Total Post. The Walt Disney Company’s Buena Vista International handles distribution.