In spite of the ongoing pandemic, producer Rodrigo Teixeira is having a very busy year. And the next one is promising to be the same:  he has eleven projects on his slate, including two pictures shown in this year’s Cannes – Murina and Bergman Island –  and two new projects from directors James Gray and Luca Guadagnino. “Actually it’s not so difficult”, he says to HFPA journalist Ana Maria Bahiana.  “I have a crew working with me, my company has 14 people.  And it’s not so easy obviously working on eleven projects simultaneously, but I have people who really help.”

Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a production company based in São Paulo, Teixeira has become a true international producer, with mostly independent features from countries as diverse as Italy, France, Croatia, Slovenia, Sweden, Germany, Mexico – and Brazil, of course. “I pick projects I like to do.  I pick projects I like to do and obviously, we only try to make them happen if we have the capacity to do it.  And developing is not the difficult part, we found a way to develop the films.”

The Witch opened significant doors for Teixeira – and Anya Taylor-Joy -, and Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name went even higher, earning awards – and, once again, launching a new, brilliant career for a new actor – Timothée Chalamet. “Maybe I am kind of lucky because I am becoming a partner on these films with these actors that became something (like) Timothée Chalamet, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert Eggers and Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig.”

His biggest project, Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt, was his biggest project – and his toughest. “It was hard developing and became a film that cost one hundred million dollars, it was my first Hollywood movie. Hollywood is Hollywood, the studios are the studios, you understand working (with) a studio, any one of them, that it is a different animal.”

Teixeira has a broad vision of the industry in these changing times. “In the last year-and-a-half I studied a lot and I think we are coming back to the ages of the big studios and the big streamers are going to be like the big studios and they are going to represent everyone.”

Listen to the podcast and hear how he became a producer; why filmmaker James Gray was an important person in his career as a producer; what is the connection between Luca Guadagnino and Bob Dylan