The story of The House of Sand was developed from a photograph of an abandoned house buried in the dunes of the sandy plains of northeastern Brazil. It was Luiz Carlos Barreto, one of the film’s co-producers, who thought up the story and encouraged Andrucha Waddington to embrace the project.

“The truth is, I never saw the photo. Luiz Carlos Barreto, upon his return from Ceará, told me the story behind the photograph and invited me to make a fictional film about a woman who lived in this house and had to fight against the sand her whole life. That same night I dreamed about the image. The next day we started discussing The House of Sand”, recalls the director.

Following Luiz Carlos Barreto’s original idea, the next step was to invite Elena Soárez to develop the story. During its conception, the screenwriter had to invent the saga practically from scratch. It took two years of work, with regular meetings between Elena, Andrucha, Barreto, his wife Lucy and producer Leonardo Monteiro de Barros, until the final version was completed.

“All we had to go on was the photograph and the confirmation of the `Fernandas' in the main roles. Thanks to the participation of these two actresses, we thought of telling a story that spanned a century. It was a script written for them,” explains Elena.

Three generations of women are forced by destiny to live for years in the remote sandy plains of the north of Maranhão. In order to mark the changes in the phases of the film, Elena decided to resort to important events of the century. The problem lay in how to reveal such occurrences, considering the inaccessibility of the inhospitable desert.

“I asked myself: ‘how would information reach a place which is practically impenetrable’ I arrived at the conclusion together with Andrucha that the news would come from the sky.

“From there we started extensive research about the principal facts of the 20th century which had some connection to the sky. We discovered, for example, that in 1919 an English scientific expedition went to the northeast of Brazil in order to photograph a group of stars during a solar eclipse, thereby proving Albert Einstein’s relativity theory. In the film, the sequence surrounding Áurea's meeting with the group of astronomers becomes an essential part of the narrative.

“We wanted three significant visits that would portray the century. The beginning has the impetus of science; in the middle the misery of war, and finally, the hippies as the means to represent the arrival of man on the moon,” clarifies the writer.

Actress Fernanda Montenegro reaffirms the importance of this research:

“Elena Soárez brought a metaphysical plane to the script. She measured the story of these two women by placing the theory of relativity within the problems in their lives. Something very pure and qualified exists in the writer’s vision, that not only makes a story but contributes to a non-realist structure, not humdrum, not simply the chronicle of a story. This meta-language in the script is what makes The House of Sand a saga. More than just a drama of manners, it is an epic story connected to this wheel, this universe, which in the end describes the story of all of us on planet earth.”

Elena had to overcome some obstacles in the production of the script. According to her, one of the difficulties was to maintain the story engaging, due to the narrative structure of the film.

“It is difficult to create a drama when one has a long time span. When one extends the period for too long, one looses the tension. The ideal thing is to have something fundamental happens in the story every half an hour. When you open it up to a century, all urgency disappears. Besides this, the film is divided into three phases. For each new stage, a new story. I kept asking myself whether, at each beginning, the audience would be willing to start over.”

The partnership between Elena Soárez and Andrucha is a long one. It was for his first film Gêmeas, in 1999, based on the story of the same name by Nelson Rodrigues, that she wrote her first script for him. However, during the same period, she was working on the Eu Tu Eles script for three years, another feature film directed by Andrucha, released the following year.

“My relationship with Andrucha is very good. He has a virtue not very common among directors, he allows you the freedom to work, besides helping a lot with ideas. At the same time, he knows exactly what he wants. He is objective and determined. He makes things happen and will turn the world upside-down, if necessary,” compliments Elena, who also enjoyed the cooperation of the “Fernandas” in the construction of the script. “They helped me a lot in the beginning when the story was still very abstract. They contributed both in the dramaturgy and in giving life and personality to the characters.”

Elena decided to cut down on the amount of dialogue, thus enhancing the images and scenes.

“Dialogue is something dangerous because it is almost the opposite of cinema. One can fall into a trap. One tends to resolve everything through dialogue but cinema works with another peculiarity. It resolves itself with the image,” she comments.

 

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