RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – As of Wednesday, July 29th, over 190 countries – which make up the Netflix base worldwide – began watching Shine Your Eyes. However, the movie will only be available in Brazil at the end of this year. The expectation is all the greater for the performance of the feature film in the African markets.
“It was Netflix Africa that proposed the purchase for distribution. Unfortunately, when we signed the agreement ANCINE had not yet adjusted its rules to the Covid-19 era,” says director Matias Mariani.
Contractually, Shine Your Eyes must debut in movie theaters, and when the agreement with Netflix was signed, the agency had not yet started working on the new reality of drive-in cinema. Some Brazilian films are premiering in this new form: “There is now a very long line of releases. We’ll have to wait for the reopening of theaters and fight for our space, which certainly won’t be easy. And although the movie is streaming, we already have an invitation to the Lagos Festival in Nigeria.”
Mariani speaks on the phone from Baleia beach, where he is isolated with his eight and four-year-old daughters. Shine Your Eyes is about a Nigerian who comes to São Paulo in search of his brother. It is a life project. “It began to emerge when I was young and studying abroad. I experienced this sense of feeling like a stranger, with no connection to the community. The film was born with a foreign character, only later he became Nigerian.”
While thinking of the character as a foreigner, Mariani started researching seven years ago, when Nigerians landed in the city. He began to take an interest in this culture. Together with scriptwriter Francine Barbosa, he taught Portuguese to Nigerians. The refugee issue was about independence, survival. He discovered the orality and musicality of the Igbo people.
This is how a brother who is looking for the other emerged, and he is a mathematician involved with a machine that predicts game results. The film becomes a journey for control. Mariani never thought about filming with native actors. They would have to be professionals and the best. He met one in Canada, one at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London – Chikwwudi Iwuji and OC Ukuje, respectively.
Shine Your Eyes debuted in Berlin in February. It was there that it earned critical acclaim and attracted Netflix’s attention.
Source: Estadão Conteúdo