Freshman filmmaker Augusto Soares has teamed up on his first filmmaking venture with noted cinematographer André Sigwalt sharing the helm to bring us their newest independent outing, The Smoke Master, starring Daniel Rocha (The Fall, There’s Something About Mario) and Thiago Stechinni (Skull: The Mask).
Penned by Soares and Sigwalt, the film focuses on a tri-generational vendetta by the Chinese mafia, one that now stares down on the fates of brothers Daniel (Stechinni) and Gabriel (Rocha). Upon Daniel’s 27th birthday, the two must journey to the far reaches of China in search of a kung fu master who can teach one of the brothers the ancient secrets of Tao Lu da Fumaça, a cannibis-based fighting style, in order to defend himself against their assassins on equal terms.
Fusing kung fu cinema with stoner comedy tropes of the early 2000s, the film is partly billed as a humble nod to Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master (1978), and it also certainly helps that Sigwalt is entrenched well in Asian cultural studies, especially as a practioner of two kung fu styles himself; Sigwalt serves as fight choreographer in reunion with filmmaker, action coordinator and SFX specialist, Kapel Furman (Skull: The Mask, Uptake Fear, Pólvora Negra), with Renan Medeiros (Aldo: Mais Forte que o Mundo, Garota de Moto) serving as fight coordinator.
Both Soares and Sigwalt spent eight years in development on the film, investing their own time and out-of-pocket resources leading up to principal photography with no subsidies or loans of any kind, and ultimately having to mitigate the inconveniences of the pandemic which further effected post-production.
According to an interview conducted by Elástica‘s Artur Tavares back in December, the financing snag was also reportedly due in part to the potential controversy that could be drawn from using government subsidies to haphazardly make a film promoting drug use, even if that isn’t the intention. It definitely makes things tougher on the artist, but it’s understandable, and also makes what Soares and Sigwalt have accomplished all the more worthwhile at the moment.
The filmmakers were last reported to be pitching the film to international sales hopefuls to land a place on the market this year, so with any luck we’ll hear more about this project come the Hong Kong FilMart or the Marche du Film if anything. I’ll keep an eye out for sure!