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| Ivo Canelas and Gaya Medeiros in An Avocado Pit |
An outstanding member of the line-up of short films qualified for the 2024 Oscars, Ary Zara’s An Avocado Pit (Um Caroço De Abacate) tells the story of a cisgender man and a trans woman who meet one night by chance on the streets of Lisbon and end up changing one another in unexpected ways. It’s a highly polished, brilliantly edited piece of work full of energy and ideas, so I was delighted to get the chance to talk to Ary at a press conference in the run-up to the next round of Oscar selections. Also present were star Ivo Canelas, producers Frederice Serrand Andreia Nunes, and executive producer Elliot Page.
“An Avocado Pit came from the urge to see trans people alive in cinema. In our real lives, it's difficult to have control over our narratives, but in film, it's possible. So being transgender, I think I come with this responsibility of portraying a different reality that still exists, but people lack access to it because most films with trans people have been made by cisgender people, so they didn't go through this experience of being trans.”
It’s a film with a lot to say on other subjects too, he notes, but particularly important to him was telling a story which goes beyond violence and death.
“The title comes from observing an avocado pit that I planted while I was writing this film. What I saw was that the avocado come to a point where it just stopped growing, and I wondered what was happening. So I tried to transplant the plant, and when I looked at its roots, the plant was trying to expand, but I couldn't see it from the outside.
“I related this event to my transition because I was expecting too much to be seen on the outside, and I was not looking at everything I was accomplishing on the inside. So that's why I picked that title for my first short film. It’s like this process that sometimes you can't see from the outside, but it's always happening and doesn't need constant validation.”
He studied film at university 13 years ago, he says, but the Portuguese industry is very small and he couldn’t break through at that time. After his transition, he decided to try again.
“I presented my script to Andreia from Take It Easy, and they embraced me within the company and helped me develop this film. But I didn't grow up with this dream of being a filmmaker. I grew up with this feeling of wanting to change the world. And it's very utopic and idealist, sometimes surreal, but it's a wheel that I carry, and I try to bring within what I write and what I do.”
“It was a major challenge,” says Ivo of taking on the male leading role. “I had a major pleasure working with Ary and Gaya. Unfortunately, she can't be here today. I believe that we worked in a state of freedom and respect for each other's knowledge and lack of it.
“We did a couple of rewrites, a lot of talking. I had a lot of questions and I think they had some questions as well. We tried to find this common ground of curiosity in the way we worked on this. The chemistry between me and Gaya was great from day one. I didn't have to act much in the sense that, as human beings with a story like this, in which the objective was the absence of violence – but still, with all the doubts that we as human beings, with the experiences and limitations we have, could express – put us all in a place of major fluidity...It was one of the most pleasureful experiences that I had in acting in my last five to ten years.”
Andreia explains that she knew Ary from film school but felt that she needed to understand him in a new way in order to connect with the script and fully understand its potential.
“The first thing for me was to understand his world and everything about him, and to understand the purpose of doing this short film. To know if we, as company and producers, fit the project, because it's very specific and special. We are not trans people. We are not in the community. So in order to understand it deeply, we need to understand first Ary and all the process.
“So that was the first thing of everything. And with this was combined, of course, the writing and rewriting of the project. It took more or less three years to come to the script that we shot, but the connection was very clear for us because it was a very honest film. Ary has something to tell and it was from the heart. And the idea to have a short film about trans people and especially about a trans woman, that's not about violence, it was the thing that got me and I think got us as producers and as a company.”
“When I read the last draft, I felt that we had to put the script on the screen,” says Frederico. “Here in Portugal it's very important also to share these things with the people. and this kind of script is for everyone. It's so honest, as Andrea said, and it's also so powerful and so balanced. So I felt it's really important to share this script. And also for me, as a cis person, I felt some curiosity to learn more about this. I learned a lot with Ary. I was also very curious to know more about these difficulties and these problems. And the film is so hopeful. There’s a lot of hope on this film. It's really important.”
“The first time I saw it just floored me, every aspect of it,” says Elliot Page, who came on board at a later stage, as an executive producer.. And it was quite a lovely moment how it happened. My friend was visiting me in Toronto and was like, ‘You have to see this short film I just watched.’ We watched it, and from the opening frames, it had me. It's astoundingly beautiful, so assured, so well constructed, but has so much fluidity. And it feels so organic and so real. The performances are just absolutely breathtaking, and how Ary and these incredible actors were able to, in such a short amount of time, create the depth in this dynamic and the emotional arc of the story.
“I just had to reach out to Ary and express what I'm expressing now and more about how much I loved the film. And then I'm just so happy that it's getting the life that it's having and being shown all over the world.”
“People respond with lack of words to the film,” says Ary. “When I go to festivals and we meet in the end, people come to me and they try to speak and they get like...” He mimes being overwhelmed by emotion. “So they ask, can I hug you? Yes, of course you can hug me.
“What we feel is that the film really touches everyone. Not only LGBTQI+ people, but everyone finds something to relate to or gets emotional about something that's personal to them through those characters. So I think it's working.
“When you decide to go through your gender transition, you start to live one of the most terrifying, but at the same time, one of the most powerful moments of your life. And being trans, being yourself, it's great. It's amazing. It's wonderful. So I got caught up on this question, like, why can't we be portrayed as we feel? And then I thought, it must because no one that is making films is having these experiences, because it's one of the most wonderful moments of our lives to become ourselves, and this needs time on screen. This needs love. We need to humanise our experience through love instead of death, death.
“Of course, that happens. This year, there were 321 trans or gender diverse people murdered in the world, so that it's also true, but it's not the whole truth. If we are trying to change and to create a new way to approach our lives, we need to see it in order to believe it, I think. So I do this film for trans people to believe that it's possible to be powerful, to be hopeful, to be loved, and at the same time, for other people to understand that our experience goes beyond gender and doesn't need to be violent or hurtful.
“Really, for this role, it would be mandatory to have a trans actress. It's not just something because of how it is perceived nowadays, it is mandatory. For me it wasn't even a question. And I met Gaya while we were working in a nightclub. I worked 11 years in a nightclub, doing the lights. And Gaya, back then, worked as a drag queen, as a performer. We met in this club, and I thought that she could be an amazing person to bring life to this character. So I decided to change some things in the way this character spoke in order to make it more natural for Gaya to perform it. I really like the rawness of it.
“Ivo, he's like a superstar, he's a monster of acting. I was very scared to contact him because he's busy. He has a life. And I am a newbie, very fresh in cinema, but I thought that I could try. It was a no brainer from the beginning. I always liked what Ivo made, so I needed to have this guy on the screen.”
“I used to live in a neighborhood where at night there's this street, sort of like a red light district, where there's a lot of prostitution, and most of it is very much trans,” says Ivo. “Where we shot the film, I used to live there. I remember the first time, when I was a young kid and I had my first car and stuff, and I drove by at night, and I remember that same sort of look that Gaya does in the film, that my character says, ‘Please don't look at me like that.’ And I remember what I felt. I remember this huge conflict of uncomfortableness and curiosity.
“What it was making me feel was a mixture of desire, very raw, and then society on top saying ‘No, you're not supposed to feel that.’ And I think that the character's conflict is that it's what he feels, whatever that is, whatever we all feel, and then society telling him ‘No, don't do that. Don't feel that.’ And that's what I really care about. It's what we feel instinctively versus what we're told we're supposed to feel. What Ary said about how it's so interesting about this finding who you really are. Me, from a cis heterosexual point of view, I'm so in tune with that as well. With me finding who I really am, with my own sexuality. What I find challenging and really brought me easily to this material is that.
“To me, this film, it's not about the trans community. It's also about how all of the other communities can learn from the example of finding who you really are. Because at the end of the day, of course, with different levels of constraint, we are all totally constrained by society. So that's where I place this character, in that fight between what he feels and what he can feel.”
The editing of the film is stunning. I ask Ary if he knew from the start how important that was going to be. Was he thinking about cutting and how it was going to look at the end when he was shooting and capturing the moment?
“I didn't have a specific idea about the editing,” he says. “But I knew that the film was going to be almost edited by the time it got to the room. Because of the way it was scripted, because of the way we shot. Everything was very prepared in the editing room. Our challenge was to play with times and looks. Because the film was already that. We didn't have more, we didn't have less. It was what it was. So it was just me and Sara [Marques] trying to find this balance between Ivo and Gaya. Like the times they should look to each other. What look to pick and how to find time, within just a night, to try to expand and to make it feel more than just that moment.
“A lot of shots within this film were not really prepared. Ivo, Gaya and I had some rehearsals and we knew what we needed to shoot, but then when were there on set, we tried to just let it roll. What happens if he is just driving and she is looking? Now go and open the window and scream. We did a lot of improvisation within this film, so that material wasn't shaped to be in the way it is. Some parts are, but there is a lot of improv through the film. And that car scene, it's improv. We are just, ‘Okay, let's talk. Let's do some actions. Turn on the radio. Turn it off. Open the window. Scream.’ And were just playing through that night.”
“We're in, quite frankly, not great times for trans and gender nonconforming people,” says Elliot. “Obviously, we've seen progress in many regards, but there is also backlash. But I certainly have hope, and I believe that queer and trans liberation will win in the end, and love will win in the end. And this film is something that absolutely inspires and celebrates that feeling as well.”
