The Brazilian closing gala at this year’s Rio Film Festival is inspired by Amyr Klink’s 1984 crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a small rowing boat 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. 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 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. 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.
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.
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. 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. It was great to work with the team because they all fell in love with the film.
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