Felipe Vellas to Direct Film About 1988 Rio Boat Disaster
Felipe Vellas has been set to direct 'Bateau Mouche,' a film based on the 1988 sinking of a boat in Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay. The disaster killed 55 people. Gustavo Lipsztein wrote the screenplay for the project from Boutique Filmes and Anonymous Content Brazil.
Felipe Vellas will direct “Bateau Mouche” for Boutique Filmes and Anonymous Content Brazil, a drama drawn from the 1988 New Year’s Eve sinking of a boat in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay. The accident killed 55 people and remains among Brazil’s most shocking historical tragedies.
Gustavo Lipsztein is writing the screenplay. He previously wrote Netflix’s “Radioactive Emergency” and “The Endless Night,” both inspired by Brazilian historical disasters. Vellas’s earlier Boutique Filmes collaboration, “Elize: Shadows of a Woman,” became a major Netflix non-English success, drawing 17.4 million views in one week and reaching top 10 in 90 countries.
The film could bring renewed attention to a painful chapter in Rio’s history, potentially affecting victims’ families, local audiences, and others connected to the tragedy. It may also strengthen international interest in Brazilian true-story productions, following Vellas’s and Lipsztein’s prior successes. Yet dramatizing such loss carries responsibility; the project could prompt public reflection on memory and grief if handled sensitively.