Illusions of grandeur

Born in 1975, Paulo grew to fame as a joint screenwriter of the 2010 thriller Julia's Eyes, produced by Oscar-winning Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

Following the success of his directorial debut, The Body, in 2012, Paulo's second feature The Invisible Guest raked in 172 million yuan ($25.6 million) in China, earning a score of 9.4 points out of 10 on box-office tracker Maoyan.

Revealing his favorite Chinese films such as Xin Yukun's sleeper hit The Coffin in the Mountain (2015) and Hong Kong blockbuster Project Gutenberg (2018), Paulo says he would like to work with Chinese filmmakers to create a suspense thriller.

And, he has a special routine he follows when he is writing a story. Paulo usually swims in the morning to relax his mind, before moving indoors to work, where he conceives and develops his plotlines in a room with a large board mounted on the wall.

"I put all the cards and organize all the information on the board. It's like doing a puzzle," he says.

"The script is like the seed that you put in the earth, and then from it a tree grows. Without a good seed you have no tree. So I've paid a lot of attention and invested a lot of time in writing. For me, the script is the most important part of the process."