Brazilian Director Afonso Poyart Tells Us All About ‘2 Rabbits’

Andrew Hawkins
Movies
Movies

Afonso Poyart is a new feature film director from São Paulo, Brazil. The man has directed countless TV commercials, multiple short films and his breakout movie Solace starring Colin Farrell (Daredevil), Anthony Hopkins (Thor) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) will be released this fall. His first full length film 2 Rabbits is now available on VOD and we here at Fandom are pleased to bring you an exclusive interview with the man himself.

Official Synopsis: Murder, kidnapping and robbery are all in a day’s work for the tangled web of ruthless gangsters, corrupt politicians and shady lawyers in this adrenaline-fueled Brazilian crime saga.

Fandom: What led to you writing and directing 2 Rabbits?

Afonso Poyart: Well, this is actually my first film. This is my first feature film and before that I was doing commercials. I was very much into the advertising business, but I always wanted to do a feature and I was waiting for the opportunity. I had the idea for this movie for a long time. I started to really sit down and put some of my time into the development of the script and I wrote the script using my spare time at night. Once I had the script, I tried to make the money for the movie and I did.

Fandom: How did you become a director in Brazil?

Afonso Poyart: I always wanted to work with movies since I was 15 years old. I always knew that and never thought about anything else and all my friends wanted to become either doctors or lawyers, y’know. I wanted to make movies, so I didn’t waste my time doing anything else. I just went straight into doing that without question. I started very early and I began my career in motion graphics and animation.

That’s how I started making films and I started doing local TV in the city I was born in, São Paulo. It was a very humble start doing small stuff, and that’s how I started to grow into the advertising business. I’ve always really wanted too tell stories, not just create commercials for brands. I knew I needed to make that switch sooner than later, so I decided to haunt my advertising career and dedicate my life to making movies. It was a very conscious decision.

Fandom: Where did the story for 2 Rabbits come from?

Afonso Poyart: I always loved action movies. I grew up seeing a lot of crime and corruption stories on the TV. I wanted to do something where the regular Joe makes a plan to strike back against those big forces of corruption and crime. That was the beginning of the initial thought. When I started to develop the script, I understood that just social justice wasn’t enough and I needed to connect people on a more emotional level. I ended up writing a story about this main character that is looking for redemption. We get to understand that as the movie progresses and by the end we get the whole picture.

Fandom: Were your characters inspired by anything?

Afonso Poyart: I think it’s a mixture of many things. It’s a film of my many experiences in life and many things I saw. The dialogue is kind of like how I talk with my friends and I tried to get that in the movie. I like very complex characters. I like multidimensional characters, even if it’s a small character. That’s kind of why you see even the bad guy and where he’s coming from. You also see that in the corrupt politician; he has a personal life, he has a wife. I feel that there are good parts and bad parts in everyone. I think the actors displayed that. I gave them a lot of space to breathe life into those characters, not just read the dialogue. They brought a lot of their personal stuff in order to become real. That’s important to me.

Fandom: The movie also has a really great soundtrack.

Afonso Poyart: Yeah, y’know I have a very musical process. You can change the feeling of a scene just by adding the right track, you can shift the tone. I like music with some story and background that people relate to. I Iike trying to create some contrast with music sometimes, like playing a piece of slow music with a fast paced scene. Normally it’s something I try to explore.

Fandom: Is there anything more you’d like to say to the fans about 2 Rabbits?

Afonso Poyart: Well I hope that people enjoy Dos Coelhos. It’s a film that needs attention to watch because there are a lot of things happening. I hope they enjoy the film. It’s a film that brought me joy. Because of this movie, I got the opportunity to direct a bigger Hollywood movie that’s coming later this year called Solace. It’s a movie that has opened around the world already. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Colin Farrell, it’s a very cool project. Dos Coelhos is my first movie and I’m very proud of it. I’m happy people are going to be able to see it in the US.

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Andrew Hawkins
Andrew Hawkins is a producer and publicist known for Mental Health and Horror: A Documentary, Jan Svankmajer’s INSECT, and Athanor: The Alchemical Furnace. Follow him on Twitter @mrandrewhawkins