Private Project

After the Dust

In the wake of an implosion, a couple revisits its fictions to try to invent a new narrative.

  • Olavo Amaral
    Director
    Um Filme Brasileiro, A Porta do Quarto
  • Olavo Amaral
    Writer
    A Porta do Quarto, Perro en el Columpio
  • Michelle Sales
    Producer
  • Rafael Mentges
    Key Cast
    O Rosto que Sorri, 2013-1
  • Naiumi Goldoni
    Key Cast
  • Vicente Moreno
    Editing
    Dromedário no Asfalto, Mãos Dadas
  • Edu Rabin
    Photography
    Silencio Forzado, De Volta ao Quarto 666
  • Matheus Castro
    Sound Editing
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Depois da Poeira
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 42 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    June 25, 2014
  • Production Budget:
    2,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Brazil
  • Country of Filming:
    Brazil
  • Language:
    Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    Full HD
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Olavo Amaral

Olavo Amaral was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1979, but has lived in Rio de Janeiro since 2009. As a fiction writer, he is the author of the short story volumes "Estática" (Static) (Brazil, 2006) and "Correnteza e Escombros" (Flow and Wreckage) (Brazil, 2012). In the cinema, he has worked as screenwriter in shorts such as "Perro en el Columpio" (Dog on the Swing, Spain, 2012) and as director in "A Porta do Quarto" (The Door to My Room, Brazil, 2012). "Depois da Poeira" (After the Dust), filmed at the remains of the imploded half of Rio de Janeiro's University Hospital, is his second fiction short as director. Besides being a writer and movie director, he is also a medical doctor, professor and neuroscience researcher.

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Director Statement

In the end of 2010, the abandoned half of the Fundão University Hospital in Rio de Janeiro (built on the 1970s but never finished, until it was condemned to be imploded without ever having functioned) was separated by stone crushers from the working part of the hospital to avoid the collapse of the entire structure. Although this story was significant to many Brazilians as a sad example of poor planning and waste of public resources, it had a more personal meaning to me. In the midst of a divorce, I witnessed the painstaking separation of the two halves of the hospital for months from my workplace in front of it, wondering if I was the only one that saw it as somewhat of a cruel metaphor of other separations in life.
After traveling just before the implosion, I returned to Rio to find an extraordinary scenario of ruins that begged to be used in a movie. And although it could house a myriad of genre films, which flashed through my mind repeatedly as I explored the area, the story I had to tell at that time was that of my own view of the demolition. Thus, actors Naiumi Goldoni and Rafael Mentges give life to a couple who meet in the ruins of the implosion, whose history gets mixed up with the fictions drawn up from fantasy, war and science fiction movies through which they reenact their own relationship. In the end, the film ultimately speaks about what to do (and what stories to tell) with the ruins that life places in our way. A question which presented itself repeatedly as the movie spun its way out of the scenario, and which hopefully can now be shared with the spectator as well.