An orthodontist turned filmmaker, Alan Minas’ has an enduring interest in exploring the connections between family members and observing teenagers cope with coming into adulthood. His latest feature Luiza’s Desert premiered at the 28th Shanghai International Film Festival.
Alan Minas is a writer, director and producer and in his latest feature film he picks apart an intimate personal experience. Commonly interested in themes of growing up, connecting with family and searching for one’s own place in the world, in Luiza’s Desert Minas also explores the confusing and devastating effects that mental health can have on a family and on a growing teenager at its centre.
We talk to Minas about his inspiration for the film, his production journey and what he hopes the viewers draw from the film.
Ramona: How did you become interested in directing and what were your first steps in making films?
Alan Minas: I always loved going to movies and talking about movies, but I studied to become a dentist. So, it was a dream or a daydream to become a filmmaker. And after a bad personal experience, I was driven to make a documentary about this subject.
So, what at first was just a hobby became my main profession. Now I’m a filmmaker and a writer as well. I published a few books and a lot of short movies and a feature.
I think it this change of objectives came naturally and gradually but it was my childhood dream to make films. I thought it was an impossible dream, but I’m here now.
R: Wow! You don’t often hear that someone from a medical or a scientific background comes into the arts. This is a very interesting transition! Let me ask you about your writing as well. What would you say is a difference or a connection between expressing yourself in words and in pictures? And is it in any way connected to being a dentist?
A: I think they have a lot of things in common. I’m a dreamer and as a teenager, I used to write poems like almost everybody. And I think there is a similarity between being an orthodontist and an artist in several ways.
The way I used to work as a dentist makes me very detailed about the results. As a dentist you have to use the lens to see what is in the mouth and you have to be very precise. Even now I try to do everything in the most perfect way possible. I used to look at such small images and now I look at huge ones on the big screen.
It’s two different conditions but there is a dialogue between them. I’m not a dentist anymore, but I used to be and sometimes when I’m writing a script, the dentist knocks on my door and says: Not this, you can do better, you can improve this or that.
R: It’s definitely not something you hear every day! Tell me about the topics that interest you as an artist. You often deal with the topic of family, the difficulties of growing up. What attracts you to this period in your characters’ lives – the bridge between adulthood and teenage years?
A: In adolescence we go through so many changes – with hormones everything is different inside you, your body’s changing, your nose and ears grow, the mouth… Everything changes. Even our thoughts are changing and we’re ready to leave our house and go into the world. And when you start any story with a teenager, you know a lot of things about the character already because they are a teenager.
Your life can change forever and become a sort of tragedy. But there is no one to blame…
R: In your stories there’s also a theme of family breakdown, and especially in Luiza’s Desert, there’s a very chaotic breakdown where Luiza has to find her way and learn how to accept responsibility while learning to deal with her mother’s mental health issues. You included this struggle because of a personal experience.
A: Yeah… My family is from the countryside of Brazil and there was a relative, a very young cousin who had a psychotic episode and it was a surprise for everybody. And there was a feeling that they changed so drastically and so rapidly and forever that astonished the parents. I myself was shocked because it was like the person that I used to play with and joke with didn’t exist anymore. It was like a death. And such a complex condition that we didn’t know how to deal with.
My intention in this film is to show how your life can change forever and become a sort of tragedy but there is no one to blame. I wanted to focus on how people around this person react. And the way that Luiza deals with her mother develops during the narrative. In the end, she realizes that she can support her mother but doesn’t have to suffer. She can have her own life, her own dreams and goals. She doesn’t have to have a cure for her mother’s disease; she just needs to have love and affection.
R: Magical realism is very important in Latin American fiction and in cinema as well. How did you approach dealing with the topic of mental health and expressing yourself through magical realism?
A: Before making this movie all the stories that I wrote or that I built were based on magical realism. It allows me to explore the tie between reality and dreams. For me this is very important because since I was a child, I saw things in a different way – a fusion of reality and dreams.
In Luiza’s Desert everything is connected: reality, fantasy, daydreams. And I think that that’s a very good meeting point for mental disease and magical realism. I think Luiza and her mother function on the same wavelength because of this.
R: That’s a very important point because Luiza is an artist and she can choose to come into this fantasy world and leave like a visitor, but her mother cannot and that realization is so important at the end.
A: Exactly. It’s the image of a passage in the ceiling. Luiza is the only one who has the ability to pass through it, to go to the madness and come back. But because she doesn’t belong to the madness of her mother and she can go out and go back.
R: You also made a documentary from your research about mental illness. Why was it important to you to put all your research in documentary form?
A: Well, at first, I didn’t intend to make a documentary. I was just doing research and I spent almost a year going every week to this mental health institute where I had a really good experience. When I first arrived, I noticed that there was no difference between patients and doctors. No special badges or clothes. For some people you could notice that they were patients, but with others not. On the first or second visit there was a man who I thought was a doctor, but no, he was a patient. And then another person, a young guy playing guitar, making jokes, walking barefoot and laying on the floor, I thought, okay, this guy must be a patient, but no. He was a young doctor.
So, everything I thought before this experience was crumbling to pieces. And this experience touched me deeply and I fell in love with all the people I met. And my idea was to allow them to make their own short films that we would later put together. And I was so immersed in this experience that I swapped my position. I lost my position as a director and became an actor in their films.
Some of their thoughts are included in Luiza’s Desert. One of them is when Soraya, Louisa’s mother, says that medicine robs us inside. One of the patients, who became a friend of mine, once told me that he doesn’t want to take medicine anymore because it tears him up inside.
R: To us, people with mental health issues seem unaccustomed to the world. And to them, trying to be like us is robbing them of themselves. It’s a very difficult thought.
A: During my time at the mental health institution, I used to think that I’m a director, a scriptwriter, and I’m here to observe everybody. I’m taking notes, looking at what they do, how they talk, how they walk. But after a few months I realized that everybody was looking at me in the same way.
R: How did you approach working with the actresses in order for them to understand this magical world that they couldn’t see until post-production?
A: In a very simple way. I try to explain. I try to speak a lot, but in the middle of my speech, Nina (who plays Luiza) told me, Okay, I got it. And she did it perfectly. It was a surprise for me, but I had forgotten that she was still a teenager and that the fantasy world was still very close to her imagination. The teenage years, just like in the movie, are a transition between fantasy and accepted reality.
R: What do you think is the most important feeling or thought for viewers to have after watching this film?
A: I think that that the film shows a lot of doors in a metaphoric way. I left clues for the viewers, but they can have their own ideas on how to put the pieces together. However, I did specifically try to create the condition of the character entering the madness territory and coming back.
Usually, I don’t like to clarify my intentions because I think it depends on each viewer. But here it’s about dealing with a crisis, a chaos in our life or in our job, with our parents… But we mustn’t forget that our mission, our first commitment, is with ourselves. I’m not saying that we have to take advantage of others or to be selfish, but we have to honour ourselves.
The 28th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) took place from June 12 to 21, 2026.
