Matheus Mello
Production
Biography
A migrant non-binary Development Angel and Creative Producer based between Brazil and Spain, with a diverse ethnic background. Growing up, they were always aware of the cultural differences in their family, which led them to question identity, gender, and its place in the world. In an effort to learn from other perspectives, they pursued a degree in International Relations and studied abroad, but still felt the need to experience the world in a more direct way. In 2011, they embarked on a year-long journey driving a VW Bus from Alaska to Brazil, traveling through 14 different countries and connecting with the complexities of the self and others. With this experience, they realized that they were filmmaking as a kid, and also learning so much about others felt just right to pursue a way to tell stories. Upon returning to Brazil, they joined the local public cinema sector and helped to write the local film policies. This experience led to opportunities in the film industry, including their first job as an executive assistant producer for a feature film that premiered in Locarno. Later studied cinema in Cuba and graduated as a filmmaker specialized in film production from the International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV) in 2018. Their work has been around identity in its broader sense, showing perspectives by people living in the margins, in the diasporas, during their migrations being physically, spiritually or geographically. Since then, they produced films and participated in film festivals, markets, and labs in Brazil, the United States, Canada, Cuba, and Spain. Also worked in film festivals, labs, and educational programs in Brazil, Cuba, and Spain, such as Nuevas Miradas (Cuba), Florianópolis Children's Film Festival (Brazil), PFF-Porno FilmFestival (Spain), Film Accelerator Programs with Lucrecia Martel in 2019 and with Werner Herzog in 2021. Their work includes short fiction films, documentaries, and video installations, been screened in various festivals like Tallinn Black Nights (award), Raindance, Sitges, Tirana (award), Morelia, Zinebi, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo (award), Guanajuato, IDFA (award), Rotterdam to name a few. They participated in prestigious labs and markets, and they are alumni of Sundance Institute, LIM-Less is More Development Angels, Realness Institute Creative Producer Indaba, and Emerging Producer Ji.hlava.
Known For
In 1968 legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog shot in the island of Lanzarote his film Even Dwarfs Started Small. Fifty years later a rather peculiar scientist recovers haunting sounds from an unearthly past.
Tegoyo
They say that Armugan moves through the valleys clinging to the body of Anchel, his faithful servant and together they share the secret of a work as old as life, as terrible as death itself.
Armugan
Dolores, in her 50s, a hermit caring for her ailing mother and aunt in a decaying Dominican estate, yearns to escape her isolated life. When a long-lost aunt returns, she stirs up painful memories, forcing Dolores and the elder women to confront their generational traumas in a surreal world haunted by mongrel dogs.
La canícula
An adolescent on a remote place narrates his story marked by a past in the Sahara being a camel, Pringles fries, the desire for fat women’s bodies, strange drawings, colonizers and reggaeton.
Notes from a Dromedary
A revolutionary trans HIV+ sex worker manifesto.
Scorpionikas – Countermanifesto
As the international press pours into Havana, Cuba to report on the death of Fidel Castro, a little girl proudly holds a large cardboard sign over her head on the Plaza de la Revolución. In a fascinating shot lasting almost 12 minutes, we watch this girl-braids, red dress, white knee socks, fighting against the wind-as she experiences her moment in the spotlight. We can't see what's written on the sign because she's being filmed from behind. Armed with cameras and cell phones, the people around her are taking countless photos and uninvited selfies with her. As the minutes tick by, our unease grows. Placed in the role of an ignorant spectator, we have time to contemplate the omnipresence of the camera-and we become desperate to know what's written on that sign.
I am
Soumaya grew up in Barcelona, and the emotional distance between her and her mother, who is originally from Algeria, often feels vast. That tension is evident in their somewhat prickly conversation about praying and Ramadan. Things shift, however, when Soumaya decides to visit her grandmother in Algeria.
The Flight of the Stork
The Colonist (9:36) This is a short film from 2022 made by Welsh filmmaker Robert A Smith under the mentorship of Werner Herzog, as part of the Werner Herzog Film Accelerator programme. It is a drama short in which an isolated man on another world leaves a colony on the verge of collapse to wander a rocky wilderness in search of meaning.
The Colonist
Xiao Qiang is a mischievous child who lives in a town in southeastern China. His desire for freedom leads him to live an adventure that will change his life.
Xiao Qiang had a daydream
On the stage of a destroyed theater, we saw a play in which Elizabeth, Mercedes and Crisalida, three black women at different stages of life, relive everything they suffered from the interpretation of their own conflicts in the form of inner monologues.
Aurora
From a place far from home, Lara is driven by enigmatic dreams to fulfill a spiritual birth ritual that will take her and her dead aunt back to Africa.
Kalunga
Under the wheel of time in a distant planet, In Lak’ech longs to return home. The search for his way back will bring him an unexpected revelation and an unusual encounter with the deepest secrets of creation.
Ixtlahuacán
A satirical documentation of the last day of light on an "alien" planet whose civilization has known for 1000 years that its star would die out.