“A whisper in the middle of space”
A Brazilian film maker from São Paulo, Leonardo Pirondi’s work explores the blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. He prefers to avoid the use of sophisticated technology in his films despite penetrating into experimental realms, where film, sounds, photography and animation mingle, all the while touching on socio-political issues.
Having studied at the California Institute of the Art (CalArts) with a focus on avant-garde and experimental film, Pirondi likes the quality of image provided by 16mm film stock. He started out with shorts, winning awards with ‘Vision of Paradise’ (2023), which he followed with a number of nominations for his later works: ‘Adrift Potential (2024) and ‘Memoirs Found in a Bathtub’ (2026)- Now there is a good film title
In ‘TROPICAL FRACTALS’ a small team of scientist are sent to into space with the hope that Earth’s living flora and fauna can be preserved for the future in a massive spaceship Noah’s Ark biodome. Using the computer MUSEU, to help them archive everything that’s possible. However, shortly before the launch, much like HAL, in ‘2001: A space Odyssey’ (1968), MUSEU starts to develop sentience and a conscience, and starts to have ideas of its own. This having been sussed before the spaceship departed, one scientist (enigmatically played by Ivo Müller) unhappy with the dependence on the use of AI, prefers to remain and try his luck on earth, becoming, possibly, the last human to wander the planet.
Ivo Müller: -
“This is my character as an actor. On this film. I am both an actor and a producer. It’s a big screen movie shot on film and you can contrast it with films that use a lot of technology while this film does not do that. It is shot in 16mm and a lot of the craft was made using normal everyday objects that you might by at a local hardware store. The sci -fi element was brought to the production entirely by the writer & director Leonardo Pirondi. By the time, I was involved with the production as executive producer, he had already shot the space ship [sequences]. He invited me to play the scientist character who remains on earth. This character wanders around on earth, because …. in our film he does not meet anyone…. so maybe he’s the last man on earth. The character is on his own and just as Leo made this film using ideas that he had already been developing in his short films, I can see that my character is wandering the world like someone who is seeing things for the first time.”
Ivo Müller as Man on Earth
Shot on grainy 16mm, the images have the feel of cinema verité, but also a feel of something that is fading and slowly disappearing. The images are textured, mixed with animated parts which, in essence, are quite poetic and beautiful, yet there is a profound sadness that envelops the film due to its theme.
This is almost a one-man-band as Pirondi was involved in the photography, the music, the editing, and the sound design. So, you could rightly label it an auteur film.
Valentina Rosset as on board scientist
Ivo Müller: -
“The film was shot in LA. The landscape for desert is so good there, you know. In LA they have sand deserts and green deserts, so it was perfect. We are both based there as well at the moment. I live between São Paulo and LA. It was the perfect place to do a hiking experience on film.”
Born in Florionapolis, Santa Catarina Brazil, Ivo Müller started out in short films and theatre. He first attracted attention for his work as Aurora’s husband on the independent Portuguese film ‘TABU’ (2012) by Miguel Gomes, and in 2016, he won the Best Actor Award at the Cinefantasy International Fantastic Cinema Festival for playing the villain in “O Diabo Mora Aqui (The Devil lives here).
Leonardo Pirondi, the writer/ director.
The beautifully shot and evocative TROPICAL FRACTALS is an allegory, a sci- fi fable, that touches on a very topical issue referring, as it does, to an ecological collapse. On board the spaceship, as things begin to disintegrate, one scientist (Valentina Rosset) starts to find that her mind begins to wander and she starts to question whether her memories are real, now lacking any way to verify them or whether they are just expressions of another crazy bad dream: -
“I woke up from a very different dream, in dark and red tones. I couldn’t recognize the ship, animals & plants, the rest of the crew… within a dense fog … A memory that no longer has a place to exist, maybe this is our true legacy, the attempt to fabricate an eternity that may not exist.”
TROPICAL FRACTALS(2026)
by Brazilian Leonardo Pirondi
at the 70th BFI London Film Festival
Writer/ director Leonardo Pirondi / Producers: Paulo Carneiro and Leonardo Pirondi in association with Zazie Ray-Trapido & Ryan Betschart/ Exec Producer: Ivo Müller and Nevo Shinaar / DOP: Leonardo Pirondi / Editor: Leonardo Pirondi / Animator: Leonardo Pirondi /Sound Design: Leonardo Pirondi /Music: Leonardo Pirondi / Quote fragment: ‘Le Citta Invisibili’ by Italo Calvino /
Cast: Ivo Müller as Man on Earth, Valentina Rosset, André Bohn, Fernando Siqueira, Utkarsh and Alex Michel as scientist on the spaceship.
