When O Amor Natural of Carlos Drummond de Andrade appeared in the wonderful Dutch translation by August Willemsen, I started to dream about a film based on the poems in the book. At first I envisaged a film in which old people would simply read the poems.

Beautiful old people and beautiful poems: that was enough to make an interesting film. But after the research period in Rio de Janeiro, the film project became richer: thanks to the poems I was able to talk to wonderful old people about Drummond, about a part of their life, about - their memories of - sex and love. The poems sometimes functioned as a kind of corkscrew, sometimes as a glass of brandy.

After my stay there, I called the film for myself Love and Melancholy.

- Heddy Honigmann