Every one of Brazilian production company Desvia Filmes' 16 features has premiered at a major international festival — Berlin, Cannes, or Locarno. Now the Recife-based outfit is entering a new chapter without its co-founder, director Gabriel Mascaro.

Mascaro, whose "The Blue Trail" screened widely this year, left Desvia earlier this year to launch Trema alongside veteran producer Paula Cosenza. Trema will focus on international co-productions, scripted series, and auteur-driven cinema with global reach. Desvia, under British-born, Recife-based producer Rachel Daisy Ellis, will keep what she calls a "laser-sharp focus" on films, backing auteurs and filmmakers who play with form and genre.

Founded in 2010 by Mascaro and Ellis, Desvia built its reputation on titles including Bruno Santamaría's "Six Months In the Pink and Blue Building," Benjamin Naishtat's "Rojo," Manuel Abramovich's "Pornomelancholia," and all of Mascaro's films, among them "Divine Love" and "Neon Bull."

Speaking with Variety from San Sebastián, where she presented "The Last Cruise" at the festival's Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, Ellis framed the split as an amicable and strategic one.

"It's one big portfolio of projects now split between two production companies, and amplified in this sense," she said. "For many years, Desvia worked almost exclusively on Gabriel's projects, especially because the two of us had a very strong creative partnership. We've reached incredible heights together, but had arrived at a moment when both of us wanted to branch out, so it was an organic process."

She says she and Mascaro share "an incredible history together," and nothing prevents them from collaborating again. "For now, this setup makes it possible for him to work with new filmmakers, and for us at Desvia to bring new creative voices in," she said.

A first fiction feature built on a 15-year-old idea

Ellis's own slate as a director includes the documentary short "The Book of Colors," feature documentaries "Drone" and "The Dream Conference," and "The Last Cruise," which marks her step into fiction. The film mixes documentary elements with a fictionalized narrative to follow an elderly couple who forgo a retirement home and spend their last years on a cruise ship.

"It's a project we've been researching for over two years, but I had the seed for the idea over 15 years ago," Ellis said. The origin lies in a conversation with a British Council contact in Recife, who told her that one of his main jobs was repatriation: elderly Brits were dying on cruise ships, with their bodies stored under the deck. He also said many retirees preferred one last major trip to a care home — and since they didn't want to, or couldn't, fly, the answer was a round-the-world cruise.

Ellis first considered a documentary on the phenomenon. During the pandemic, she read an article about people choosing to live on cruise ships full-time because it costs less than living in many major cities during a cost-of-living crisis. "Once I read that article, the original idea came back into my mind, and I was set on making it happen," she said.

She has locked Brazilian financing for the production — a crucial step for a project she calls "not a cheap project." The film requires her to follow a couple on a cruise for a year, with the subjects also filming themselves and their daily routine on board.

"This first-person point of view is very much part of the way I work as a director," she said. "It's a way of having access to a layer of intimacy I otherwise wouldn't be able to capture. I also realized this film is about love and companionship. 'Eros,' my previous film, was also about this, and I feel this film is a continuation of my interest in how people communicate with their partners when they live on the periphery of the norm."

New partnerships, same provocations

With Mascaro gone, longtime Desvia producing collaborator Camille Reis became a partner and now leads several projects. Given Reis's limited bandwidth, Ellis brought in Argentine producer Gema Juárez Allen ("Reas," "Plaza Catedral") to lead on "The Last Cruise." The two are seeking a co-production with Argentina.

"I worked with Gema before; we worked on 'Pornomelancholia' together, and when I invited her to produce the project, she loved the idea," Ellis said. "It's been incredible working with her, and this partnership as a producer is beautiful to me, because I know what it feels like to have an incredible producer by your side and how that changes the project. Once she boarded 'The Last Cruise,' I knew we would be good to go."

As for Desvia's direction, Ellis is unequivocal: the company remains "very focused on cinema." "We haven't had the drive to branch into TV or other formats," she said. "When I look back at all the projects I've worked on with Gabriel, and all the co-productions we've worked on, they are all very daring films, with a latent desire to provoke. This is something that attracts me both as a producer and director, and we want to continue to bring Desvia towards that pathway."

The upcoming slate backs that claim. It includes Clarisa Navas's "They Burn the Same Way," a buzzy project at this year's Venice Gap-Financing Bridge; Filipa Reis's "Lontra," a co-production with Portugal, Spain, France, and Argentina; and "Who Named the Earth?" — a feature debut by Indigenous filmmaker Wara. With Brazilian financing secured and an Argentine co-producer on board, "The Last Cruise" now heads into production as the clearest signal of what Desvia looks like after Mascaro.