Set visit: 'Brazuca'

As the only British journalist permitted on the set of ‘Brazuca’ – the film telling the story of Jean Charles de Menezes – Dave Calhoun is surprised to find music, comedy and celebration at the heart of the tale. He talks to the writers about their reframing of a well-trodden London tragedy

When I turn up on the set of ‘Brazuca’, a film about the life and death of Jean Charles de Menezes, I wonder if I’m having the wool pulled over my eyes. There’s a party atmosphere at the Clapham Grand, a Victorian theatre in south London which is adorned with the sort of chinoiserie – gold dragons above the stage, Oriental patterns on the walls – that was fashionable when the place was built in 1900. On stage, film director Henrique Goldman, a slender, energetic 47-year-old Brazilian Jew (‘a rare platypus,’ he jokes) who’s lived in London for 16 years, is rehearsing four young dancers, resplendent in crop-tops and bikini bottoms the colours of the Brazilian flag. With them is Sidney Magal, a crooner in his late fifties who was famous in Brazil in the 1970s and ’80s (think Tom Jones – clothes, hair, dance moves and all). He’s miming over and over to one of his old hits while the girls gyrate and flick their hips around him.

Everyone’s having a blast, and it’s hard to separate cast and crew from the family and friends of de Menezes, who have been supportive of the film and often appear in it. One of the producers points out a brawny Brazilian guy in his forties who I later see acting in a scene that shows de Menezes fixing an amplifier so the show can continue: the same man was de Menezes’s boss when he was an electrician.

The mood is a long way from the gloom of the ongoing inquest into the death of 27-year-old de Menezes. A few weeks ago a jury was shown photos of his body lying on the floor of a tube train in July 2005 after he was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder by police who mistook him for a terrorist. Here we are, three years on and only a couple of miles away from Stockwell tube station, watching this sexually charged revelry unfold. And the more I watch, the more I am convinced that the producers of this film, which has high-profile backing from director Stephen Frears and Ken Loach’s producer Rebecca O’Brien, have deliberately invited me along to witness one of the sunniest scenes of an otherwise downbeat film. Surely their aim is to get the word out that ‘Brazuca’ (the nickname Brazilians abroad give each other) will be more than a miserable retread of a tragic story which we continue to read about in the papers every week? Could it be anything else?

Well, yes. A read of the script and a conversation with its director leaves me thinking that this may be something original – entertaining even. What Goldman and his fellow writer, Marcelo Starobinas, a Brazilian journalist at the BBC World Service who’s never written a film before, are aiming for is a portrait of de Menezes from a new angle. In a café round the corner, Goldman tells me that initially, back in 2005, he thought of making a documentary about de Menezes.

‘I tried the BBC, Channel 4, the usual suspects,’ he recalls. ‘But it was a bit early and no one was interested.’ Then he received an email from his friend Fernando Meirelles, director of ‘City of God’ and ‘The Constant Gardener’, whom the BBC had approached to make a drama about the shooting. Meirelles was busy and recommended Goldman instead. Goldman took the job but became uneasy that the BBC wanted to make a drama from the outside looking in. ‘I thought the story had to be told from the point of view of the family, not the police,’ he explains. When the BBC pulled the plug, he was relieved.

The film became an independent project and Goldman began collaborating with Starobinas on a lively, rounded portrait of de Menezes that immerses him in London’s Brazilian community. Goldman and Starobinas wanted the killing (which Goldman tells me he’s dreading filming down on a disused platform at Charing Cross in a few days) to come out of the blue and to be even more shocking for it. The script is fun: De Menezes, who’s played by 34-year-old Selton Mello, makes money as a scam artist in the building trade, thinks of himself as a ladies’ man and strikes up a relationship with a hip young English girl, played by Eva Birthistle.

‘We interviewed people in Jean’s life and they were such a chaotic, amusing bunch I wanted to make a film celebrating his life and immigration,’ says Goldman. He tells me ‘Brazuca’ will mostly be in Portuguese, with English scattered here and there. And he is determined that it will be funny and anarchic. ‘When European filmmakers look at foreigners, it’s always sad as they see people who are marginalised and live in difficult conditions – and that’s fair enough – but, from the immigrant’s point of view, London’s a fantastic place. That’s why they want to come here. Jean loved this country. And I love this country. If you’re young and have ambition, it’s a wonderful place to be free from the conventional world. Jean’s friends always say: "How could they kill Jean? He was a bit of a clown." We didn’t want to make a sad film but one that was life-affirming and that honours him.’

Back in the Clapham Grand two hours later, the place has filled up with Brazilians here for the free bar and Magal; he’s performing again, with Goldman darting around behind him and working the crowd into a frenzy. But, despite the talk of comedy and celebration, Goldman does intend ‘Brazuca’ to be a reminder of what happened on that morning in Stockwell and an indictment of the police’s failures that led to an innocent 27-year-old’s death. ‘The more people laugh and enjoy the film, the more tragic his death will be,’ he reasons.

So this won’t be a dull campaigning film. Goldman’s full of the ironies of the situation, pointing out that ‘the same government who killed Jean Charles is financing a film about him!’ (He’s talking about the UK Film Council, which has put more than £500,000 of Lottery money into the film.) He’s also quick to stress that the Brazilian police killed ‘something like 2,663 people’ in the same year that de Menezes died and is mindful of how British and Brazilian attitudes towards his killing vary: ‘In Brazil, nobody is as outraged; he’s only famous because he’s famous here,’ Goldman points out. He laughs and then sighs almost in the same sentence. ‘Life is complicated – and it’s our duty to say this.’

‘Brazuca’ will be in cinemas next year.

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