Downtown Miami’s brutalist, concrete-filled architecture left an impression on screenwriter and filmmaker Bernando Britto as a kid. He grew up across the county line, in Weston, but often visited his father at work, where he was struck by Miami’s tall white buildings against the bright blue skies and the deserted ambiance of the city’s downtown after 5 p.m.
This tropical, brutalist backdrop is something also present in Britto’s native São Paulo, Brazil, but the downtown Miami of his adolescence is what Britto tried to convey in his new science fiction feature film “Omni Loop,” now available for streaming.
“I wanted to capture a sort of emotional truth of the city or something that spoke to almost my imagination of my memory of being a child in the city,” said Britto.
In Omni Loop, a quantum physicist named Zoya, played by Mary-Louise Parker, finds herself in a time loop, with a black hole growing in her chest. She teams up with Miami Dade College student Paula, played by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, to try to unlock the mysteries of time travel.
“I was always just really into the idea of doing a science fiction movie that didn't shy away from the kind of bright blue skies and the weather of the city,” said Britto. “In fact, I use that so we could contrast the kind of coldness of those lab environments in the school.”
The film’s title, Omni Loop, is named after a Miami-Dade County Metromover line, the free electric people moving system that connects downtown and its nearby neighborhoods, like Brickell and Park West.
It was while riding the Metromover, where a lot of the important pieces of the film came together for Britto, like the film’s title, the main character’s name and where she’d be going in certain scenes.
“The name is so sci-fi … it's such a big name for something that is a little bit dinky,” said Britto. “[It] kind of just goes around a circle … and this sort of idea of this like infinite loop, but really all it does is take businessmen to other places to eat lunch or something, that's that kind of absurd contrast that I find really interesting.”
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Britto knew he didn’t want to try to recreate this specific South Florida vision somewhere else, so production took place almost entirely in Miami.
Locals might geek out at a Ron Magill cameo, or if you’re a former or current Shark, you might recognize one of Miami Dade College’s campuses onscreen. And, of course, there’s the Metromover.
Britto has always wanted to make work in Miami, especially since New York and Los Angeles are overrepresented in cinema and the arts. A number of Britto’s works were inspired by both South Florida and his experience growing up in different cultures and moving around to different places.
For the characters in Omni Loop, Britto just wanted to portray normal people, a normal family in a regular South Florida home — not the stereotypical, larger-than-life Miami personality common in pop culture.
“I always write from a place of, hopefully, sincere emotion,” said Britto. “I just tried to write it as like, ‘what would any person do in this situation?’”
“[The actors] can just kind of bring their authentic experiences and then the environment will just sort of shape it around them, just by being here.”
Grief as inspiration
Britto started writing Omni Loop years ago, right as he wrapped up his first feature film Jacqueline Argentine (2016), a mockumentary that follows a director who films a woman that claims to know about a plot to assassinate a politician.
It was different from the kind of films he had made until then, like The Places Where We Lived (2013) and Yearbook (2014) — both animated shorts.
Britto was in his early 20s when someone close to him had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died.
“The ending of Jacqueline is very kind of like 24-year-old … ‘we'll all die’ kind of thing,” said Britto. “I just remember thinking that I wanted to do something about death, around the feelings that I was experiencing.”
“How do we find some feeling of closure? Or, at least just something that allows us to keep living and connecting with others.”
Britto also had ideas about time travel, time travel pills and black holes in people’s chests. All these elements eventually found their way into the story of Zoya, but it wasn’t an easy process.
“You start writing it, and that's when you realize, ‘well, I'm essentially writing a movie about the meaning of life,’ and so then that took a little bit to figure out,” said Britto.
Science fiction has always triggered deep feelings in Britto, so it was the perfect lens to tell this story of grief and loss. Very human issues and emotions mixed with absurd imaginative concepts, according to Britto, are made for each other — along with some kind of comedic element.
It’s a theme that’s noticeable in his other works, too. Like in Yearbook, a man is hired to compile the definitive history of human existence before the planet blows up. And like in Hudson Geese (2020), a six-minute animated film of a goose remembering his last migration.
“I wouldn't be able to write a science fiction movie without diving into something that I feel connected to emotionally or intellectually or philosophically,” said Britto. “On the same hand, I don't think I'd be able to write a movie about death that didn't have some element of lightness or some element of cinematic fun.”
The reactions from younger audiences is what always feels special for Britto, especially this time around for Omni Loop. At recent screenings at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, he had teenagers expressing their love for the film, where they said it made them want to call their parents.
Britto said he had his parents in mind while making the film.
“I must have done something right if it made you want to call your parents,” said Britto. “If you watch the movie and it just makes you want to reach out to someone that you appreciate or that you feel connected or close to in some way … even if you just want to complain about the movie … that's more than I could ever ask for.”
Filming in South Florida
Britto and producers of the film had to fight hard to get the movie made in Miami. Filming in South Florida is expensive, which explains why so many films and TV shows that are supposed to take place in Miami, are shot in places like Atlanta or Louisiana.
It doesn’t help that Florida got rid of its last major financial incentive program nearly a decade ago, which had offered performance-based incentives like cash rebates and tax credits to attract productions.
“They show you two pieces of paper and they say this is what it'll cost to do this in Georgia. This is what it will cost to do it in South Florida,” said Britto. “It's tough because … you're an independent film, every dollar counts.”
Shooting Omni Loop in Miami came with some sacrifices. Britto, for example, had to edit the film himself, so that some of the money could instead go toward special effects and clearing the music.
There was also the challenge of South Florida’s unpredictable weather. A hurricane shut down production for a few days. But Britto insists the tradeoff — the most beautiful locations and sunsets you’ve ever seen — is worth it.
He said it also helps further create community and an industry in South Florida for TV and film crews that are eager to work.
“We just never let this be a movie that was not going to be shot in Miami,” said Britto. “I can't rightfully expect every production in the world to do that. I think that really does have to start with the governments and the tax incentives, and hopefully they recognize what a benefit it is to have movies shooting here.”
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