The country's 2013 Oscar submission is a departure from such famously two-fisted Brazilian contenders as "City of God."

Selton Mello Headshot - H 2012
Selton Mello

After a standing-room-only screening of Brazil's foreign Oscar submission The Clown at Sundance Sunset Cinema Nov. 30, writer/director Selton Mello explained to viewers (including Rio de Janeiro-born Homeland star Morena Baccarin, who buttonholed him on the way out of the theater) about how his movie about a melancholy traveling circus clown's midlife crisis fits into Brazilian film history. "It's a fable," said Mello. "Movies are in a poetic way related to dreams. This movie has a dreamy quality." Despite its rural sense of place, the film's characters (a father-and-son clown team, a larcenous firebreather, a cat-obsessed small-town judge, a crowd-enchanting child) seem to float in a sweet, sad world located in Mello's kindly mind. "He's one of our icons," Baccarin told The Hollywood Reporter. "He's been acting since he was a boy. He's … we have a word for it, 'querido.' It means, 'of the heart,' or 'a wanted person.'" The dictionary defines it as "dear."

Mello also corrected one common misconception about The Clown: that it's an homage to Fellini's dreamily peripatetic carnival cinema."Fellini? Of course. But another Italian director, Ettore Scola's A Viagem do Capitao Tornado [The Voyage of Captain Fracassa] may be more [of an influence] than Fellini. My main reference is Peter Sellers and the brilliant work he did in Being There. And Dostoyevski's The Idiot. The Idiot and Chance Gardener are like cousins."

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