João Pedro Prado has received a script development grant from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) to work with award-winning Brazilian author Ricardo Domeneck in 2025 on the screenplay for his debut feature film, TO DREAM OF CATFISH (German title: Von Welsen träumen), produced by Vincent Edusei and Maritza Grass of Carousel Film.
The film, inspired by Ricardo’s short story The Public Days, follows a middle-aged Brazilian poet who returns to Brussels from Berlin to retrace the remnants of a failed relationship with a much younger man. In doing so, he is confronted with the realization that he is aging while the world around him appears unchanged.
As described by João: “This project grew out of a long-standing friendship and creative collaboration with my co-writer, Ricardo Domeneck. We first met in São Paulo when I was 17, during a poetry reading he gave at my high school. Even then, Ricardo’s work struck a chord with me. His poems revealed a reverence for the sacred—rooted in his religious upbringing in the countryside of São Paulo —and a simultaneous veneration of the male body, reminiscent of ancient Greek ideals. Our shared Brazilian roots and the struggles we faced upon moving to Berlin bonded us. Over the years, we often exchanged stories, observing how our backgrounds—filled with conservative values, silenced family tragedies, and humor as a survival tool—shaped our perspectives on identity, language, and belonging.
When I first read Ricardo’s short story The Public Days in 2020, during the quiet intensity of the pandemic lockdown, I felt an immediate connection. The story centers around a failed relationship between an aging artist and a younger lover in Brussels, examining the artist’s longing to reclaim his past. This exploration of memory and identity struck me as an incredible foundation for a film, rich in visual metaphors and layered with intersecting timeframes, memories, and existential crises. I saw the potential to delve into a camp aesthetic that could balance humor with pathos, crafting a world where the cacophony of languages and interactions reflects the protagonist’s fragmented identity.”