‘Firebrand’ Director Karim Aïnouz Starts Production on Erotic Thriller ‘Motel Destino,’ the Match Factory Handles Sales

variety.com:

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Karim Aïnouz’s “Motel Destino,” which began filming last week, has eroticism, a recurring element in his films, as the backdrop.

The Match Factory is selling the international rights. His eighth fiction feature marks a return to the director’s Brazilian roots after having shot his first English-language production, “Firebrand,” starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law, which played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Aïnouz won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2019 for “Invisible Life.” “Motel Destino” is an “intimate picture of a youth whose future has been stolen by a toxic and oppressive elite, against which rebellion and violence are often the only possible way out,” according to a press statement. “‘Motel Destino’ is, above all, a love story,” Aïnouz said. “The love between a peripheral young man who lives against a system that wants him dead and a woman who resists the attacks of patriarchy against her own life.” He added: “‘Motel Destino’ is the Brazilian saga of the encounter between a person on the run, utterly helpless, and another who is being crushed in an abusive marriage.” The strong and vibrant colors of Ceará, the director’s home state in Brazil, set the visual and narrative tone of the new work, which features two local talents, Iago Xavier and Nataly Rocha — selected through auditions from more than 500 actors — in the lead roles, alongside the Emmy-nominated actor Fábio Assunção (“Songs of Betrayal”). “I’m very interested in talking about crime, not sordid crime, but crime as the only escape from the place we are living in, the world we live in.