Andrucha Waddington on ‘Ângela Diniz’ and ‘Magical’ year for Brazil
After directing one of Brazil’s most interesting genre works in Globoplay’s highly successful ER procedural ‘Under Pressure’, renowned multi-hyphenate Andrucha Waddington (‘The House of Sand’) turns his sights to another popular subgenre. In HBO Max’s ‘Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada’ (‘Ângela Diniz: Murdered and Convicted’ in literal translation), the director gambles on true crime by looking at one of the country’s most infamous cases: the murder of a popular socialite in the 1970s at the hands of her boyfriend. Check out an exclusive image courtesy of Variety above.
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is produced by Waddington’s indie powerhouse Conspiração and will land on HBO Max on November 13 in all territories where the streamer is available.
The series, based on Rádio Novelo’s podcast “Praia dos Ossos,” reunites Waddington with “Under Pressure” and “The End” star Marjorie Estiano as the titular bon vivant. When we first meet Diniz, she has decided to divorce her wealthy husband, a shocking decision in a still conservative, sexist time. Her love of fun and romance was highlighted in the newspapers’ high society columns. This shame was weaponized by the defense of her boyfriend, who used the thesis of “legitimate defense of honor” to avoid a conviction, sparking a wild debate that fueled a prominent feminist movement and lasted for decades until the abolition of the legal term in 2021.
Speak with Variety of the Rio Film Festival, where the series had its world premiere during a packed screening at the heart of the festival, the Odeon Cinema, Waddington calls the project a ‘dream’. He is also grateful to Praia dos Ossos producers Branca Vianna and Flora Thomson-DeVeaux, who shared the podcast’s extensive research material with the series’ creative team.
“It was something Conspiração believed in deeply,” Waddington adds, saying they acquired the rights to the story in 2019 before the podcast even aired. “We worked very hard to make this happen, and I needed to be surrounded by women because this is the only way the story can be told. Our idea was to show what her life was like and how it was distorted in the media, so that we could explore how society, despite having evolved a lot, remains sexist.”
Renata Rezende, general manager of production of Latin America at Warner Bros. Discovery, says that with a project like this, they not only want to revisit a case, but also “propose a contemporary conversation about what has changed and what continues to be repeated when a woman takes up a space of freedom.” “We believe these types of stories help us think about the country and the way women are seen. It is a work that provokes and fuels discussions that are still very relevant today.”
Courtesy of the Rio Film Festival
Commenting on his first foray into true crime, Waddington says what motivates him is “working on things I haven’t done before.” The director has worked on psychological thrillers, documentaries, musicals, comedies… What hasn’t he done yet that he would like to do? “Science fiction. I think it’s a very interesting subgenre.”
The day before “Ângela” premiered at the Rio Film Festival, a restoration of Waddington’s debut feature “Twins” was screened at the event with the presence of “I’m Still Here” mother-daughter duo Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, also the director’s wife and longtime creative contributor. “The film is the same age as the festival, so I felt like I was traveling in time. It was very emotional to hear Ilda (Santiago, festival executive director) talk about the film. Next year I will be working with film for 40 years, and it will go by so quickly.”
“The premiere of ‘Ângela Diniz’ at the Rio Film Festival has a beautiful symbolism for us,” adds Rezende of the festival. “Film festivals are spaces historically dedicated to cinema, and seeing series occupying this space shows how the barriers between film and TV have become porous, especially when it comes to works with great aesthetic ambition and narrative power. It’s a move we’re immensely proud of, and it’s an important part of our strategy to amplify local content with artistic quality and cultural relevance.”
As for what’s next, Waddington recently wrapped “Emergência 53,” a series about Brazil’s mobile emergency response service, and is preparing to shoot “Os Corretores” (“The Realtors” in literal translation), starring Torres, who also wrote the original screenplay.
“We don’t know yet what genre ‘Os Corretores’ will fall under because I think we will find the tone as we work on the project, but what I can say is that it is a hyper-realistic film set in the real estate world during the short period when the Brazilian economy grew and then abruptly collapsed,” says the director of the project.
As for Torres, Waddington had a VIP seat for the “I’m Still Here” phenomenon in his home country. When asked about the current momentum of Brazilian cinema, the director says it has been a “magical year.”
“I think Brazilian cinema is a phoenix; it is constantly being reborn,” he adds. “We have had the Cinema Novo, the Cinema de Retomada and now after that the [Bolsonaro] the government has fallen, the funding is back and we are seeing the results. We generate two million jobs and inject more than R$70 billion (US$12.7 billion) annually into the national economy. We are a sector and have structured ourselves well.”
“One thing I think is important is regulating streamers,” he reiterates. “This is the only thing missing in Brazil. Everything else and every other exhibition stream is regulated, so it is time to regulate streamers so that we can boost and improve national production.”
“Ângela Diniz: Assassinada e Condenada” is an HBO original fictional series produced by Conspiração and written by Elena Soárez, Pedro Perazzo and Thais Tavares. Waddington and Renata Brandão produce for Conspiração, while Mariano Cesar, Anouk Aaron and Vanessa Miranda executive produce for Warner Bros. Discovery.
