How Goa’s casino culture sparked inspiration for Brazilian film ‘The Blue Trail’

MUmbai, Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Mascaro says the vivacious gambling casino civilization in Goa inspired several elements of his acclaimed take, “The blueness Trail”, which was screened at the 56th International Film Festival of India recently.The dystopian drama served as the opening movie at the film gala, held annually in Goa in November. It follows the story of 77-year-old Tereza, forced to retire from her job and placed under the guardianship of her daughter, who defies a government order for relocation imposed on its growing elderly population, embarking instead on a personal journey through the Amazon.“I came here six years ago and I was really inspired by the context and a few ideas of the movie came from here, when I was writing the screenplay. For example, this strong casino culture in Goa and I thought, ‘My movie could have a casino as well’,” the director told PTI in an interview.“In my movie, you can see the casinos, gambling, it's something that I discovered in Goa, like there are these big boats of casinos here,” he said.The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Berlinale, garnered praise from audiences when screened at IFFI.Mascaro said his aim with “The Blue Trail” was to highlight the right to dream and the inspiring role an elderly person can play.“The majority of the movie is fiction. It's an absurdist reality. It speculates reality in a different way. It's more than a real situation that we are facing in Brazil. Not only Brazil, but different parts of the world are reacting to the movie in a very beautiful way because they are very moved, as the movie is about freedom, about the right to dream,” the director said.“The movie could be shot in another part of the world. For me, it was natural to think about Brazil as I'm from Brazil, and hence I can express myself creatively. But I think of it as a universal movie,” he added.Having also visited Goa when his earlier film “Divine Love” was screened at IFFI, Mascaro said he hopes to return to India soon.“It's been so special to be back with this new film. Hopefully, they will invite me again for more time because three days is not a long time to spend in Goa because you need time to understand the local culture. I hope I can connect more and more with India,” he said.Mascaro also spoke about similarities between India and Brazil, saying that the two nations have rich diverse culture, similar architecture and experience humidity.“We are close in the context of diversity. It's special to see this country where we’ve a lot of different resilient cultures, surviving and interacting with each other. It's very beautiful and inspiring like you as a huge country as well can have a lot of different languages, cultures, ethnicities existing between each other. And Brazil has that as well, but not that strong as India,” he said.Mascaro said he has always had a keen interest in Indian cinema, particularly the indie films emerging out of the South Asian country.The filmmaker has particularly liked Chaitanya Tamhane's 2014 movie "Court" and Payal Kapadia's "All We Imagine as Light".“It's nice to see the Indian independent cinema also strong as this big industry like Bollywood and others that you have also in India. But it's interesting how you can do both and coexist.”This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.