Que Mundo É Esse?

Leila Lak

When Felipe Ufo was growing up in Leblon he thought he would be an economist but then in 2004 the tsunami hit Asia and things changed. He found himself going with other surfer friends to help and to film the consequences of the horrific tragedy. Whilst most people headed to Sri Lanka or Thailand Felipe and his friends chose Banda Aceh, the city closest to the epicenter of the earthquake that led to the tsunami and at the time it was in the grips of a civil war. They chose it particularly because very few others were there telling the story of the people surviving the tragedy of this natural disaster.

Thus began Felipe’s journey as one of Brazil’s top international documentary filmmakers, a journey that has led him to cover much of the world, especially the Middle East and recently making a film about the refugee crisis in Europe for Globo’s series “Que Mundo e Esse”

“We are all humans and when I watched what was happening there I thought it was a great travesty,” said Felipe about his decision to head to Europe last October to tell the story of the makeshift refugee camps.

His career has focused on telling international stories that are absent from Brazilian TV. He says there is little foreign news on TV and when there is news Globo covers it by having a reporter sitting in a hub, like London or Tel Aviv, rather than having coverage from the country in question. Despite Brazilians being incredibly diverse “um povo vira lata,” he said, “Brazilians are pretty disconnected from the rest of the world,” he said.  “Like for instance when I went to Iran I realised how disconnected we were from the reality.”  He made friends with people in parks and was introduced to an Iran that he had never seen on the screen, an Iran where the young like to hang out and socialise like the rest of the world.

Following George W Bush’s declaration that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were the Axis of Evil, Felipe and his colleagues were determined to head to these very nations to make films showing the ordinary lives of people.  

In all his films he maintains a specific style, which he calls “Uma mistura de jornalismo com reality show.”  He never uses a fixer in his locations but relies on social media, twitter and Facebook to make the connections. He says he prefers to discover the scenes that interest him and therefore his audience rather than relying on a fixer to show him a country through their eyes. He said one of the scenes he found most interesting was filming a market in Iraq on Friday, where people were milling around like they would in any country, a scene so ordinary but also so enlightening. His films are targeted at younger viewers and were a regular feature of Multishow. In 2009 his series on Iraq, Iran and North Korea were said to be “o melhor filme na cable”

The refugee crisis took Felipe and two colleagues to Hungary where they followed the refugees through Serbia, Germany and then Greece where they met those arriving from Turkey by boat.

They showed the plight of an Afghani who had lost several members of his family on his journey to Europe, and Syrians who had left everything and everyone behind to make the treacherous journey.

“When you spend time with these people you realise that they have a lot of similarities with our reality here in Rio. Syria use to be a peaceful country,” he said.  “You think wow it could have been me fleeing, leaving my family, my city, and my friends with a backpack with very few clothes, going to a country I don’t know, a language I don’t speak and where I don’t know a single person. It makes you feel more for them. Really they don’t have a choice but to abandon everything.”

Felipe chose to follow a few European volunteers who helped set up the make shift camps.  He explained the situation on the ground as being so fast moving that big organisations like the UNHCR and Medicine Sans Frontier could not keep up so it was left to some groups of volunteers from around Europe who would hear about 50 buses of refugees coming to a particular location and volunteers would set up make shift camps, providing basic food and doctors would provide help to the children and sick.

“We were in touch with many of these people, mostly Germans. It was pretty much younger people. We made these contacts through social media, FB and twitter. We had contact via whatsapp with them and they would tell us where people were coming to, so we were able to follow the movements and this helped us,” he said.

Having spent so much time in so many different locations, Felipe has developed a sense of perspective on how global situations are seen by the people in the country it effects. For instance the fact that Hungary closed its borders to the refugees, Felipe sees in perspective of Hungarian history. They were the great Austro-Hungarian Empire but since then they lost much of their land to neighbouring countries. He says the idea that this relatively small population opens its doors to millions of foreigners is terrifying for many.

“This is the view of the government. But when you get there and you meet the population you meet various Hungarians helping many of the refugees. We met many Hungarian volunteers.”

As Felipe and his colleagues journeyed through Europe mostly at night, what he found hard was fact that their car had space and the refugees were on foot but they were not allowed to help them by giving them a ride, as this is against the law. Most of the filming was done at night in the various camps, and they always tried to keep in touch with the refugees. One of whom they went back to visit in Germany in January this year. Throughout the film the tragedy of the refugee situation is palpable but so is the focus on the volunteers who tried so hard to welcome the refugees and provide them some solace on their long journey.

“What we really tried to do in this documentary is to separate the vision of the government to that of the people,” he said.

The series “Que Mundo É Esse” can be seen on Globosat.