6 Festivals: behind the scenes

Writer/director Macario de Souza recounts the insurmountable odds he and his team had to overcome to make the feature film 6 Festivals.

More than five years in the making, 6 Festivals is the narrative feature film debut for writer/director Macario de Souza and tells the story of three best friends who make a pact to travel to their favourite music festivals following a shocking revelation. With de Souza’s background as a performing artist, it was a story close to his heart and also one that required immense persistence to complete and get to the big screen.

“6 Festivals started to become the project that everyone was, you know, joking that it was the cursed project,” de Souza says. “We went to shoot and we were postponed because of bushfires and floods and then the pandemic.”

In this behind-the-scenes video, de Souza discusses how his youthful days growing up with music influenced the story he wanted to tell, the tricky negotiations required with licensing live music and the strategy he implemented to filming at festivals.

6 Festivals is screening in select cinemas 11 August 2022 and will be available to stream later this year on Paramount+.