Mauro Pinheiro Jr.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

At a turbulent time in her life and career, an overwhelmed writer seeking relief returns to drinking after 15 years of sobriety, but goes from a simple glass of wine to total loss of control.

In 1951, New York poet Elizabeth Bishop travels to Rio de Janeiro to visit Mary, a college friend. The shy Elizabeth is overwhelmed by Brazilian sensuality. She is the antithesis to Mary’s dashing partner, architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Mary is jealous, but unconventional Lota is determined to have both women at all costs. This eternal triangle plays out against the backdrop of the military coup of 1964. Bishop’s moving poems are at the core of a film which lushly illustrates a crucial phase in the life of this influential Pulitzer prize-winning poet.

In this supernatural thriller, the dark mysteries of the quest for immortality take over the scorching rural roads of the Goiás countryside.

Set at the turn of the year 2000, the series follows a group of friends at the end of their teenage years. Everything becomes even more dramatic when Beta dies, at the age of 17, on the night of their high school graduation.

In the periphery of São Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dênis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier.

Marcelo leaves his family and moves to Mato Grosso do Sul, where he learns how to fly airplanes by himself watching the pilots. One day, he responds the call of a drug dealer and uses his boss' plane to help the man to transport his cargo. He is hired by the drug lord to work transporting drugs in his airplanes. When he is arrested by the Federal Police, he does not rat his gang and the leader of the cartel gives a large amount of money as a bonus and asks him to leave the gang since he is known by the police. Marcelo uses the money to promote a party in the Carnival of Recife pretending to be the son of the owner of the Gol (a Brazilian air flight company). He lures the high-society, including the television presenter Amaury Jr. Marcelo is arrested again and is sent to prison. During a rebellion, he uses his leadership to present the claims of the prisoners and help to control the situation.

Malu — a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum — tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past.

1942, in the middle of Northeastern Brazil, two very different men meet along the road: Johan, an aspirin salesman avoiding the German draft, and Ranulpho, a rural Brazilian seeking escape from the drought.

Veronica, a young woman, lives in Recife, one of the most violent cities in Brazil. Her life is filled with fleeting love affairs and passing romances. As her father feels his death approaching, he asks a favor: that she finds true love before he passes away.

The film brings Clarice Lispector’s novel Uma Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres to the current days. In the plot, Lóri is a lonely and melancholic woman. She divides her time between her duties as a school teacher and her relationships, which are always fast and shallow. By chance, she meets Ulisses, an acknowledged Philosophy professor, who is self centered and provocative. Although he knows nothing about women, Lóri learns with him how to love and to face her own loneliness.

A fateful day reunites an estranged family in Mexico City, where a chain of events shifts their romantic relationships and uncovers a monumental secret.

A young girl of 13 lives with her mother on an isolated property. They are awaiting the return of their father and husband. But instead, another man appears, transforming the relationship between the mother and daughter. Based on two short stories by Brazilian poet Hilda Hilst.

Diego is a film director who, when he is told that he has a malignant disease which could be fatal, marries his girlfriend of many years, says goodbye to his friends and begins a routine of long days of treatment in hospital. While learning to live with the pain and also conversing with death, he meets a Hindu boy who is a fellow patient and who becomes his friend. But one day the boy disappears. Diego is discharged, but his life has changed forever. His marriage fails and, living alone, he begins to wonder whether he may in fact be dying and no one has told him. He tries to find out what happened to his Hindu friend, and eventually meets another woman.

Everyday family life as perfectly normal madness. “As Melhores Coisas do Mundo“ follows a few days in the life of the 15-year-old Mano, who is fighting on two fronts: his parents have just got divorced and he is going through puberty. Mano tries to make his way through life, with its first sexual experiences, his depressed brother and his self-centered parents. It’s a humorous homage to the pitfalls of daily life and the diversity of life.

Violeta is a married dentist on a normal working day. While listening to a message left on the cell she enters in despair. The message of her husband, Djalma, says he is leaving her and going to another city.

When the Netuno Circus returns to Fernando de Noronha, it brings back a young man with a turbulent past. Pedro is now Zolah, the human cannonball. When secrets surface, bizarre family reunions rival the circus performances.

In an empty city, scorched by the sun, the young and old confuse the fever of sunstroke with the delicate birth of passion. Like ghosts, they hover around buildings and endless flatlands in search of the ever elusive love. Inspired by 19th century Russian short stories, the plots weave and unravel together in the improbable city of Brasilia – a distorted mirror-image of the Soviet utopia – located in the heart of the Brazilian desert.

Thiago lives with his family on an isolated farm in the arid backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil. As the story unfolds and Thiago is forced to confront separations and betrayal within the home, Thiago begins, little by little, to see and understand a place that he had never been able to before, thus slowly letting go of his innocence.

In a Brazilian coastal village where everything seems motionless, Clarice grasps her life in a single day, unlike those she meets and who are living this day like any other. She tries to understand her obscure reality and the destiny of the people around her in a circular time that haunts and disorients.