During our time at this year’s London Film Festival DN took the opportunity to sit down with Eryk Rocha the Brazilian director of Burning Night (Breve Miragem de Sol) – a film which depicts the isolation and economic struggle of a Rio de Janeiro taxi driver as he works the city’s late night streets. In our discussion, Rocha reveals the ways in which his documentary background brought an authentic reality to this fictional story and how the film’s themes of hardship and separation mirror the current crisis in Brazil.
Burning Night (2019)
Down on his luck and recently divorced, Paulo has begun driving a cab around Rio, hoping he’ll make enough to send his ex money to support their ten-year-old son. He mostly works nights, so in addition to his encounters with a colorful variety of customers, colleagues, cops and others, he must cope with loneliness, fatigue and new faces in his life.
Through this man we are talking about the crisis that we are living in the city of Rio de Janeiro but also in the country of Brazil.
I love Rocha & Carneiro da Cunha’s interview on the amazingly eerie “Burning Night”. I love Gabriela’s voice, by the way. It has an effect of dislocation similar to that of the “mystery woman” character she plays at the end of Burning Night. Apropos of that, I wish you had asked Eryk about that scene. I’m still trying to get my head around it.
Glad you enjoyed the interview. Eryk and Gabriela were both fascinating and engaging guests. If I get the opportunity to speak to Eryk again I’ll try to draw him out about that scene.