Interview by Marta Represa
Portrait by Famke van Hagen

MR Tell us a bit about yourself. 

GN I grew up in north-east Brazil. My dad was a photographer, which means I was always surrounded by cameras, and that led me to photography, storytelling and documenting life. Eventually, I moved to LA to pursue a career as a director, and I’ve been there for over ten years working on commercials and branded content. I’m now working to step away from advertising and fashion, trying to find deeper stories that can help communities. I’m currently developing feature films and documentaries. 

MR Where did the idea for Alice come from? 

GN I reconnected with Alice at a moment when I was fed up with always doing the same thing. I was looking for interesting stories, and she really inspired me. Alice and I used to live in the same apartment building, and her father was friends with my father. We weren’t close friends because she was younger than me, but we would occasionally go surfing with our fathers, or meet by the skate park or the beach, and talk a little. When I reconnected with her, I was struck by what a creative, smart person she was, especially coming from a city where everyone kind of tends to do and think the same. It’s hard to step out of the box in Maceió, but that hasn’t stopped Alice from living life on her own terms, painting, skating, developing her own personal style. I thought that was so cool, and it made me want to learn more about her. She is now 25, going to university in Pernambuco and pursuing a career in art. 

MR How involved were you in the queer community before you started shooting the film? 

GN I am a straight cis man, and I have a lot of queer friends, many of whom are skaters and surfers. I am aware of how it is for them. Coming from a surfing community and having worked with surfers all my life, it has been extremely frustrating seeing the lack of diversity in the water. Surfing can be pretty close-minded and sexist, with the acceptance of queer surfers depending on whether they pass or not. Needless to say, there are not many trans people surfing. So the film came from this desire to explore something that is in my life that isn’t right. 

MR Is the skating community more open-minded? 

GN I feel like it is, probably because it’s more accessible to more people, and so you get a mixed community coming together to share one love. Surfing, on the other hand, requires you to live by the beach and to have all this gear, so it tends to attract a certain kind of person. But let’s not fool ourselves, there is still a lot of prejudice in skating too. 

MR What was it like for Alice to get back in the water? Is she surfing regularly again now? 

GN She’s not surfing so much right now because she has been focusing on her studies, but that session we did filming her in the water was so cool, and so much fun. That’s not to say it wasn’t challenging to her, but it was such a joyful moment seeing her back in the ocean, and I hope it will inspire others to do the same. That’s really the whole point of the movie: to start a conversation and to inspire others to chase their dreams and do the things they want to, freely.  

MR What inspired the film’s experimental cinematography? 

GN I wanted to both think outside the box, and to reflect Alice’s journey and way of thinking, so I came up with a few different ideas for the filmic language. The idea of freedom is central to the film, so we wanted to do whatever we felt like when it came to the cinematography as well, which explains the changes in colours and formats, the camera going upside down, etcetera. We did some underwater shots in a pool in the studio, because that afforded us greater control over lighting and colours. Then, there is one part of the film where the aspect ratio changes: the moment where Alice hops on a motorcycle and the driver misgenders her. She then corrects him, which is a really self-affirming moment, and the screen gets bigger. It’s a representation of her growing confidence and of the way in which she is inviting the viewer into her world.

MR In the film, you stress the fact that Brazil is the most violent country towards trans people, and has been for years. Were you aware of that fact as filming began?

GN I didn’t know it before I started working on the project, but Brazil has the highest rate of transphobic killings in the world, and I felt like we had to make people really understand that – especially because, in people’s minds, Brazil is a very open, very queer-friendly place. But that obviously doesn’t apply to all LGBTQ people, and it needs to change. One thing that can lead to that change is to have that conversation because I found that, like me, most people I showed the film to weren’t aware of this fact.

MR How has Alice been received, both in Brazil and internationally?

GN So far, we haven’t shown the film much apart from in festivals, but our Brazilian premiere was in Rio de Janeiro and it was such a special moment. Alice was there, along with people from all walks of life: surfers, non-surfers, skaters, trans folk. Everyone was cheering for Alice and they all really embraced the film. I think they were proud of the fact that it was a Brazilian production. I can only hope they were inspired by it. We then had our European premiere at the Sheffield Documentary Festival, before showing it at the London Surf/Film Festival. There, I was anxious to see how a particularly surf-oriented audience would react – and we ended up winning the award for Best International Short! It was all very emotional. We are currently seeing how to make it more accessible to the general public, so stay tuned. .