Carolina Markowicz on TOLL (TIFF 2023) – Jennifer Green interviews

Brazilian director Carolina Markowicz’s debut feature film, Charcoal (Carvão), earned rave reviews last year after world premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) then making its European debut at Spain’s San Sebastián International Film Festival. (The film has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 15 reviews.)

Now she’s poised to repeat the hat trick with her follow-up film, Toll. Only this time, TIFF is celebrating Markowicz with its Emerging Talent Award, and Toll was selected as the closing night film for San Sebastián’s Latin Horizons section.

Markowicz has been drawing worldwide attention since her 2018 short film The Orphan – starring Kauan Alvarenga in a role with similarities to his character in Toll – debuted at Cannes, where it took The Queer Palm. It went on to play in over 200 festivals, winning more than 50 awards.

Well-known Brazilian actress Maeve Jinkings co-stars in both Charcoal, which is about a family offered a diabolical deal to put their ailing elder to rest and host a drug kingpin on the run, and Toll. Here, Jinkings plays a single mother struggling to make ends meet who puts herself in jeopardy to afford conversion therapy sessions for her son (Alvarenga). She works at a motorway toll booth and has a freeloading criminal boyfriend.

Both films tackle societal injustices and the stresses of poverty. This makes sense considering the context in which Markowicz and other Brazilian filmmakers are working. She describes how some politicians view the Brazilian film sector as an enemy, and several – including former president Jair Bolsonaro – have made publicly inflammatory comments about homosexuality. (People across Brazil’s sector expressed deep concerns when Bolsonaro first came to office in 2018 in interviews I conducted for The Hollywood Reporter).

The environment offers inspiration. “I think I am a filmmaker who takes risks,” Markowicz says. AWFJ spoke with the director in advance of her busy fall release schedule about her newest film, the challenges for Brazilian filmmakers – particularly women, the possibility of meeting one of her filmmaker inspirations at TIFF this year, a run for the Oscars and a potential future project in the US.

Jennifer Green: One of the things that I found particularly interesting about your film, and maybe this is because I’m a mom, is how you managed to make the mother character so sympathetic, even despite her actions. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about that aspect and also the writing and casting of the main characters for this film.

Carolina Markowicz: For me, at the same time that it was very important to portray the boy as a strong person who was not a victim but whose mom wouldn’t accept him, it was a pleasure to show this mom not as a villain, not as a bitch. She’s just a product of a society that is very conservative, that makes people think, that teaches people that they shouldn’t be gay and if they have a gay kid, or different somehow, they did something wrong. I think people have a lot of sides to them, they have a lot of colors. There are shades, there’s more to it, there’s not only good and bad. And I think it was very important to show that she has a teenage son, who sometimes can be a pain in the ass. It would have been easy to show this mother who was a homophobic, to portray her as a bad person. But I didn’t want that.

Speaking about the actress, she was in my other film, Charcoal, and she’s a very well-known actress here in cinema in Brazil. She’s a great actress, and I’ve always been a fan of her work. She’s very skilled, she’s very gifted and she has this ability of going through drama and humor in a very smooth, very believable way. I wanted someone like that, someone you could enjoy, a person that you feel is real. And I thought she was the right person to do it. I didn’t want to have the same actress in both films, but at some point, I felt so much that she was the one who had to do the film.

JG: She’s likeable, but she’s not joyful. She seems, and I don’t know if you asked her to play the character this way, but she seems to emit stress.

CM: I’m so happy that you say that because she does. She does, because she has a son that she doesn’t accept, first of all, and after that because she works in a toll booth. People here in Brazil who work in a toll booth, they have a very tough life. They earn such a small amount of money and they work so hard. These women, we did a lot of research on them. They wake up at like 3 if they work in the morning, which is even less tiring than working at night. They wake up at like 3, 4 o’clock in the morning. And then they do 12 hour shifts, it’s insane. So they are always so tired and so stressed because most of them are single moms. There’s a lot from their real life. And she has this boyfriend who’s a bit shady, this kid that she has to support, she needs money. I mean, it’s a lot.

And the city is stressful too, with these industries and the sound of the city that is loud. And when you are in the toll, it was so crazy, you know, Jennifer, to be there and shooting there, because the sound is insane when you are in the toll shooting. We stayed there for a couple of days shooting. These women, these people are there every day listening to cars and to horns. It’s crazy and so stressful.

JG: Was that technically difficult as well to get the sound just right?

CM: Very difficult, everything – not only the sound, because we were in a real toll that was actually working. It was impossible to stop a toll because it’s a real road, so it was technically very, very challenging.

JG: And it looked like you were shooting at night a lot as well. Getting back to the characters, the contrast between the work friend’s sort of unhealthy heterosexuality with the son’s very healthy and normal development was interesting. Was that intentional as well?

CM: It’s interesting to hear that. I think it was intentional to bring this normality to this kid who is growing up, as you said, naturally, and she doesn’t accept that. At the same time, she has a friend who is like her. Everything that she says is the truth, like a prophet or something, and then she is completely wrong and hypocritical. It doesn’t make sense. Only because she’s religious and married and straight and she has a husband. It’s a product of the society that says that what’s right is this thing that actually is theater.

JG: She’s also hiding her sexuality in the bushes off the side of the freeway, right? So it’s not that that’s out in the open either.

CM: Exactly. She’s not what she claims to be. And she doesn’t like that her friend discovers that as well. She needs to perform.

JG: Speaking of performing and prophets, were the sessions of the conversion therapy based on any real stories that you’ve heard or read about, or was that all imagined?

CM: We have a lot of stories that are very sad, and some very weird, and some very bizarre. Politically, the conservative politicians, what they say about gay people – we have one of the most voted senators here in Brazil who said that kids cannot play with Elsa from Frozen because she’s a lesbian. We have this deputy that says that the anus is the unholy evil. The most voted deputy of one of the most important states in Brazil went with a wig in the Congress to make fun of transgender people. It’s completely insane.

So the idea was to portray this conversion therapy that was insane in a world that would be reasonable, which is not the world we live in now. Everything is made up, but some of the things that they say are inspired by real events in the political environment.

JG: Were you inspired also by personal experience living in Brazil and by the social context, that political context?

CM: Yeah, definitely. Here in Brazil, you hear things in the news every day that are unbelievable. Unbelievable. And it’s not like something you would go in the street for, but you see politicians, the president, this woman that I said was the former Minister of Human Rights, the woman that said that about Frozen. It’s bizarre, it’s crazy. They empower people to say whatever they want, violently, against the queer community. So, yeah, I’m very inspired by the environment I’m living in.

JG: I imagine independent cinema like this has as much difficulty in Brazil as elsewhere in Latin America and Europe. What’s the impact of being able to play your film at a festival like Toronto or San Sebastián in terms of bringing awareness back home in Brazil?

CM: It’s very important. We are coming from a government that tried to shut Brazilian cinema down completely because they saw us as enemies, because we were at some point trying to criticize the government for obvious reasons. So I think it’s very important to bring these films and these teams and our culture to very important film festivals like these, to be seen and to portray what is going on, because sometimes people think that these things don’t exist. And our culture and our cinema can show otherwise. And in different tones as well, it doesn’t need to be just dramatic or to exoticize, but you can also use humor and whatever tone and voice that comes from the artist. I feel very honored and I know the importance of bringing these ideas and this film to Toronto and to San Sebastián.

JG: It seems like it takes a lot of courage as well, based on the context. I read that the head of TIFF called you “fearless” when he announced the Emerging Director Award. Is that how you see yourself? Do you feel that way?

CM: I love it so much. You know, I was saying that I was so happy hearing that because, you know, I go to shady themes and show the hypocrisy and peculiarity of the characters and use a lot of acid and dark humor to speak about sometimes very sad stories and minorities. This mix of tones is also very risky. I think I am a filmmaker who takes risks, so I’m very happy to be rewarded for that. I love this word fearless. I feel very encouraged to keep doing this kind of cinema, and I’m happy to hear that.

JG: Are there filmmakers outside of Brazil that you look to as inspiration?

CM: Yes, many, but I would say it’s funny because one of the honorees for this year, for the Tribute Award [at TIFF], is one of my main references worldwide for my entire life, which is Pedro Almodóvar. I love him. He mixes drama and humor. I love him so much, and he’s going to be honored. And I’m like, oh my God, I’m going to meet him. I don’t believe it.

JG: What do you think are some of the biggest challenges for female film directors in particular in Brazil right now?

CM: I think it’s hard to be a woman artist. I think it’s hard to be a woman. I think men prefer to listen to men’s stories told by men, but I think things are changing. There are women who are amazing filmmakers and artists, so I think there is a strong movement of putting women’s voices more loudly, and I think sometimes we don’t even notice how unfair and bizarre it is. Right now, we are trying to run to be the Brazilian entry for the Oscars and we realized that in 62 years, only three women’s films were submitted by Brazil. The other ones were all directed by men.

I think we are trying to speak about it and trying to make it a bit more equal, which is important. There are places that are doing better than us here, but we have a lot of great women filmmakers in Latin America and in Brazil. I think we should continue giving more and more voice to them in front and behind the cameras.

JG: Would you ever be tempted to make a film outside of Brazil?

CM: Yeah, sure, absolutely. I cannot say much, but I am working on developing a film with an American company. I would love that… We are still speaking about it, if we are going to shoot in the United States or somewhere else, or even here, but it will be an American film… I like to have different experiences, but for me the most important is to be excited about the idea, about the film, about the story, about what this film will become.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.