The Lobsterman

At ninety years old, a lobsterman still goes out to sea. The Lobsterman is a feature documentary portrait of a man who has spent a lifetime on the waters off the coast of Maine — hauling traps, reading weather, and carrying the quiet knowledge of someone who has learned to live in conversation with the sea. Invited by his grandson to document his grandfather's daily life, I began a process of sustained fieldwork: observing, listening, and slowly earning access to a world shaped by memory, physical endurance, and a deep sense of place.

The film follows him through his routines and his recollections, from childhood to the present day, tracing the arc of a life that is at once singular and deeply tied to a disappearing way of being in the world. It is a film about time: the time it takes to become who you are, the time a body keeps, and the time that a landscape holds long after the people who shaped it are gone.

I came to this project as an outsider — a Brazilian filmmaker living in Maine, drawn to a world I did not know. What I found was an invitation to slow down and pay attention. My approach to documentary has always begun with questions rather than answers: What story is worth telling? Who is telling it, and from where? The Lobsterman has taught me that the most important things reveal themselves only to those willing to wait. This film is being made through a process of deep listening — returning again and again to the same man, the same water, the same light. It is a portrait, but it is also a practice.