Our Son!!!

Based on the book of the same name by journalist Denise Paraná, the film narrates the story of Lula from his birth until his mother's death, when he was a 35-year-old union leader detained by the political police of the military dictatorship. The screenplay was written by Paraná, Fábio Barreto and Daniel Tendler. Writer Fernando Bonassi was hired to supervise it. João Miguel, best known for his role in Cinema, Aspirinas e Urubus, was initially cast as Lula, but declined due to scheduling problems. Tay Lopez was then cast, but declined due to medical reasons, since the role required him to gain and lose weight quickly and he suffers from hypertension. Little known 30-year-old stage actor Rui Ricardo Dias was then cast as Lula. Other cast members includes Glória Pires as Lula's mother Dona Lindu, Cléo Pires as Lula's first wife Lourdes and Juliana Baroni as Dona Marisa Letícia. Lucélia Santos, a close friend of Lula, played a small role as his teacher. Milhem Cortaz, known for playing a corrupt police officer on Golden Bear-winning Tropa de Elite, was cast as Lula's father Aristides. The film was produced by Luiz Carlos Barreto and Paula Barreto, father and sister of the director, respectively, and is predicted to be the first Brazilian feature to premiere simultaneously on the South American continent. The budget of the film is relatively high for Brazilian cinema standards: over 17 million reais (more than 9.5 million U.S. dollars). The Barretos, which supported Lula on both 2002 and 2006 presidential elections, claim to have obtained the budget without government funds in order to repel criticism from their work. According to Agência Estado, however, the film was sponsored by several contractors, something extremely unusual for the Brazilian film market. Three of these companies maintain direct business with the federal government. The shooting of the film began on late January 2009 on the Pernambuco municipality of Garanhuns, Lula's hometown. On February, the second phase of the production began in Santos and Guarujá, cities on the coast of São Paulo where Lula spent most of his childhood. The shooting was predicted to end on March 21, 2009. The film was edited in time to premiere in some international film festivals, prior to its wide release on South American movie theaters on January 1, 2010. Some facts of Lula's early life coincides with several interesting aspects of the History of Brazil, the reason why Paraná decided to write her book, which is also her Ph.D. dissertation on the University of São Paulo History School. During her research for the book, Paraná interviewed Lula himself and several people connected to him. According to her, while listening to Lula's statements, she thought that it was "a poorly written movie script, because everything fits". Among the facts of Lula's life and the History of Brazil that "fits", according to the author, are the death of his first wife by malpractice during labour on the same time that Brazil had one of the highest rates in the world of death in childbirth, the migration of his family to São Paulo on the same time Brazil was struggling with its largest internal migration wave and Lula's father alcoholism on the same time of epidemic incidence of this disease in the Northeast region of Brazil.