Veio

“I had no idea what I would find when we decided to fly to the distant state of Sergipe,” says director André Lion, who traveled to northeastern Brazil to document the life and work of a small-town artist called Veio. “Despite being a huge admirer of his work, my contact with Veio had only been by telephone. Also, my anxiety about the trip was forged by the false idea that we must have control over everything—a state of mind imposed on us by big cities. But I set this aside and ended up embarking on one of my most pleasant documentary experiences.” Veio is a short film that immerses the audience into the isolated universe of a self-taught artist who looks to nature to guide his work and philosophy. Veio spent much of his formative years in the company of adults, gradually developing an interest in bygone eras and the recent past. This earned him the nickname Veio—meaning ‘old’ in Portuguese.