When filmmaker Fernanda Salgado first began developing Ana, En Passant in 2012, she imagined a story about a young woman searching for her identity. More than a decade later, the project had evolved into something far more personal, shaped by motherhood, the experiences of Black women, and the importance of understanding where we come from.
What began as Ana’s journey gradually became an exploration of the relationships between generations of women, and how the memories and histories we inherit can shape the people we become.
Speaking to Cinephile Tourist at the BFI London Film Festival, Salgado reflected on the film’s lengthy development, her desire to challenge conventional portrayals of Black lives and the unexpected ways the story began to take on a life of its own.
After initially developing the idea in 2012, Salgado put the project aside for several years before returning to it in 2018. By then, her life had changed considerably. “I had my daughter in 2017, so it’s a very cataclysmic change in my life,” she said. “I was a very different person, and I think that informed this new project.”
“Ana was very much at the centre of this story, and her journey from France to Brazil, and her journey in trying to understand who she was,” she said. “But through development, the story started being less about Ana and more about the relationships between several generations of women, in particular Black women.”
For Salgado, Ana’s search for identity became inseparable from the histories of those who came before her. “Her journey of finding herself necessarily has to go through also uncovering roots and memories and ancestry, so that she could really ground herself and be able to open up some paths towards the future.”
It was a subject that had fascinated the filmmaker long before the project reached the screen. “I really love this quest for identity that she’s in,” Salgado explained. “I think the theme of displacement is a very universal theme, but it’s also very closely tied to Black culture as well.”
Beyond the personal journey of her protagonist, Salgado wanted Ana, En Passant to participate in a broader conversation about how Black lives are represented in cinema.
“That was a constant desire of mine, to have this film being in dialogue with contemporary Black cinema, in which we are trying to portray Black lives and Black experiences from a different lens, perspective,” she said. “Outside of a lens of constant struggle, violence, like that. So you’re actually looking towards the future, towards life, brightness and connection between women.”
The filmmaker was equally interested in exploring how those ideas could be expressed visually, rather than relying solely on conventional storytelling. “I wanted very much to experiment and open up new doors and windows in what our possibilities are for us to make films,” she explained.
She described her interest in “a lyrical, poetic type of animation” and experimenting with fantasy and magical realism, allowing the film to move between different ways of expressing memory, identity and experience. “What types of stories can we tell, and what types of stories will we tell for ourselves, about ourselves, and to our children as well?” she asked.
For Salgado, the question of what stories are passed on to future generations has taken on an especially personal meaning since becoming a mother. Her daughter, now nine, has grown up alongside the project, with the film’s development spanning much of her childhood. When asked whether her daughter had seen the finished film, Salgado smiled at the question. “Oh, she loves it,” she said. “She feels very close to it, both because she’s nine now and the film took eight years to be made. Her whole life, yes, and it’s very much entangled in our lives.”
For Salgado, creating a story about the possibilities available to women while raising her own daughter gave the film an additional emotional significance. “I think that this opening of possibilities towards daughters, and women, in terms of what it is that we can actually do, I think that goal was very much accomplished.”
Yet despite spending so many years developing Ana, En Passant, Salgado admitted that some of the most meaningful changes were ones she hadn’t originally anticipated.
Asked what surprised her most throughout the process, she reflected on how the characters themselves gradually reshaped the story. “I think what surprised me was how the film started demanding things of me,” she said. “It was very much centred around Ana, and then, when I kept writing, those other characters, the grandmother characters, started demanding to be more present, into more episodes.”
What had originally been conceived as an individual journey increasingly became a story about relationships, as the women surrounding Ana assumed a greater emotional importance. But it wasn’t only the fictional characters who transformed Salgado’s experience of making the film. She also found herself deeply affected by the relationships that developed among the women working behind the scenes.
Reflecting on the women she collaborated with, Salgado recalled that some had never previously experienced the same level of creative freedom. “That was very surprising for me, how we were able to foment this space of freedom and creativity and connection between these talented women.”
It is a particularly fitting outcome for a film that has become so deeply concerned with female relationships, shared experiences and the importance of creating space for different voices.
More than a decade after the first version of the screenplay was written, Ana, En Passant has evolved alongside its director, shaped not only by her creative ambitions but also by the changes in her own life.
And while Ana’s journey may begin with a young woman trying to understand who she is, Salgado’s film ultimately asks a much bigger question: how can we imagine our futures without first understanding the women, memories and stories that brought us here?
Ana, en Passant screened at the 2026 BFI London Film Festival on October 13 and 14, as part of the festival’s Journey program, which explores stories of identity and shifting perspectives. The animated feature is continuing its festival run, although a UK theatrical or streaming release date has yet to be announced.