Why do you do so much filming in Amazonia?

I was completely taken with the Rio Negro. I saw this river and knew that this is my place. An encounter like this might happen only once in a lifetime, like meeting a soul partner.

Whatʼs special about the people who live in Amazonia?

An endless amount of patience in dealing with extremely difficult living conditions, the potential for a great deal of passion and an inexhaustible supply of talent for improvisation and coming to terms with seemingly hopeless situations.

Why a film about flying in Amazonia

? Because of a love of flying, and because flying is especially important there. Brazilʼs Amazonia measures an enormous five million square kilometers, and airplanes are the primary means of transportation in places where there are no roads and the alternative is river travel lasting days or weeks. And because flyers have a birdʼs-eye perspective. As a result, they see the world differently, in a more comprehensive way.

How did you find your two protagonists?

I spoke with twelve pilots and took down their stories. The most interesting, in my opinion, were the ones Nilton and Fernando told, and what they said about flying was as well. Theyʼre antagonists. One is a family man building his nest, the otherʼs a nomad whoʼs attracted to danger. And thereʼs the thing that links the two, the kidnapping they went through together, which was a matter of life or death.

In the film the pilots are portrayed by actors. Why?

In fact, I wanted to use the two pilots. That wasnʼt possible, because they would have lost their jobs if they spent months working on a film production. So I decided to use actors, but without abandoning the documentary approach and the improvisation during shooting.

How did you develop the pilotsʼ stories?

At the beginning, there was the research and many hours of conversations with the pilots. The transcriptions of these conversations was the material I started working with. The pilotsʼ monologues in the film are based on this authentic background, and I put them into literary form.

How important is work on the screenplay to you?

I began as a writer and started directing later. I approach my theme by writing about it. The screenplay is the process of this approaching and reflecting about the results of the research and how itʼs turned into images, including verbal images.

You arenʼt very strict about the dividing line between documentary and fiction film?

Iʼm not a fundamentalist in that respect. 'Flyers' contains elements of both genres, like most of my films. The point of departure is and remains the authentic. I then react to that with my own ideas and imagination. In other words I complement found elements with others that were invented.

How long did shooting take?

Ten weeks, during which we undertook a great journey through Amazonia. I wanted to show not only Amazoniaʼs jungle, which resembles an endless field of broccoli from above, but also its mountains and savannahs and enormous river archipelagos, the diversity to be found in the cosmos of Amazonia.

The filmʼs rhythm is slow.

That was my intention. I want my films to breathe in contrast to the widespread breathlessness.