The idea for "Desert Home" was inspired by a photograph of an abandoned house in the sands of northeastern Brazil. Producer Luiz Carlos Barreto took the photo to director Andrucha Waddington and encouraged him to make a film about it. "In fact, I had never seen that picture, and Luiz told me the story of the house in the picture, and suggested that I make a movie about a woman who lived in the house fighting her life against the desert, and that night, I had a dream That scene, the next day, we started thinking about Casa de Areia," Waddington said.
Subsequently, director Waddington found screenwriter Elena Soarez, but it took two years from the initial conception to the final draft. Later, the screenplay won the 2002 Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker Award.
The entire film was filmed in an ecological reserve and was shot in the Marannon Dunes National Park, a 155,000-hectare national park in the Brazilian state of Maranhão that includes the Bajacias, the Umbedo Plain, and Brimeracuru In the three regions of Sri Lanka, the desert is 50 kilometers deep underground and spreads 70 kilometers on the surface. The natural features of the park include 40-meter sand dunes and a brackish lake with blue water during the wet season from June to September and 8 months of dry season.
Before filming, it took the crew two years to find the location, one year to plan, and three months to build the small village before filming began. “We went to the national park once in each season, 11 times in total, to get the climate, terrain and road conditions and learn the rules of the park,” recalls director Waddington. In the end, the crew was authorized by the Brazilian Association for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) to start construction of the exteriors in the buffer zone of the national park, mainly including 12 houses, all built by local traditional craftsmanship, and the transportation of workers and building materials is even more arduous setbacks. The village built by the crew was preserved after the filming as a tourist attraction.
The film participated in the 2005 Toronto Film Festival and the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and won the Alfred P. Sloan (former General Motors President) Film Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Recognizes outstanding films that tell the stories of science, technology, and related people.
The two main characters in the film were written by director Andrewka Waddington for his wife and mother-in-law.
