João Moreira Salles

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

Intermissions follows Lula during the hectic election campaign for the presidency in 2002. Lula gave filmmaker João Moreira Salles and his crew complete access, and the result is an intimate documentary of what went on behind the scenes. Sometimes, Lula is afraid that he will lose his freedom as president. Combined with Lula's candor, the film's observational style provides some very special insight into one of Brazil's most popular leaders.

Made from interviews with young Brazilian students by filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho before his death (in February 2014), the film seeks to understand how teenagers think, live and dream nowadays. The footage was edited by Coutinho’s longtime partner, film editor Jordana Berg, and the final cut is signed by João Moreira Salles.

For the Suruí, an indigenous people in western Brazil, there was a lot at stake in the 2022 presidential elections. Under incumbent President Bolsonaro, logging and mining companies were given free rein in their territory. His opponent Lula, on the other hand, pledged to protect the Amazon and uphold Indigenous rights. Tribal leader Almir and his daughter, the young activist Txai Suruí, are each followed during their campaign in the final month before the elections. While Txai travels abroad to raise awareness about the destruction of the rainforest, Almir campaigns across the state of Rondônia, seeking support for his congressional bid.

Documentary about Santiago, a peculiar man who used to work for the director and his parents as a butler. The material was filmed in 1992 but, for some strange reason, the director felt he couldn't edit it and put it aside. In 2005 he remembers the unfinished film and starts its edition.

The daily lives and routine of 37 families living in a huge 12-story building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro: their drama, aspirations, intimate revelations, loneliness, dreams...

Futebol is a riveting series of three 80 minute documentaries produced by award winning documentary maker Joao Moreira Salles of Videofilmes, the production company he started with his brother Walter Salles in 1987. By turns fascinating, enthralling and in parts profoundly moving, Futebol is a social commentary on Brazil and the national obsession with the beautiful game and its stars.

A documentary about urban violence in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro. Policemen, drug dealers, and shantytown dwellers get trapped in a daily war that knows no winners.

A light-hearted and high-spirited story, full of spice, sensuality and romance, Viva Zapato tells the tale of Dolores, a beautiful Cuban dancer who decides to leave her failing marriage and open a restaurant by the beach with her aunt from Brazil. When her aunt sends her a pair of shoes instead of the money to start up the restaurant, she angrily sells the useless gift for spare change. Her dream fades away - until she discovers that the money was hidden in the heel. The zany search for the shoes begins, as she follows the footsteps through the lively streets of Havana, running into the quirky, colorful characters that bring Viva Zapato and Dolores' dream.

In the 1970s, "festivals" were incredibly popular in Brazil, as they were recorded before a live studio audience, and usually featured a number of elimination rounds. They also formed the springboard for the career of many a big-name stars, such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Roberto Carlos and Gilberto Gil. Appearing on such a program was no cakewalk, however: audiences could be as wild in their condemnation as in their appreciation of an artist. Extensive archive footage (including performances and behind-the-scenes interviews) from the turbulent final evening of the Festival of Brazilian Popular Music 1967 paints a fascinating picture, not only of the transformation of Brazilian music into real "festival" music, but also of a society starting to buck against the yoke of military rule.

Simple, emotionally compelling documentary that delves into the songs that hold meaning in people's lives. It is composed of 18 sessions where the director engages his subjects in conversation about the song they picked. The end product is deeply personal stories about music and its intimate connection to memory, love, loss, self-discovery, regret, death, and life.

A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.

A resident of the Cantagalo favela in Rio de Janeiro, Adão Xalebaradã is the composer of more than 500 songs and has never been recorded in Brazil.

João Moreira Salles' "Nelson Freire" is a film-documentary about the great Brazilian pianist, who is certainly among the five great pianists of the world today. Nelson Freire is a quite discreet / shy person and João Salles respected this feature of his personality. During almost two years he followed the pianist around the world to compose a film, made of 31 thematic sections to cover the many aspects of the life of this genius of the piano.

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Six people, one family, ten years later. Dois Tempos resumes the narrative of the lives of the Braz, created in 2000, in the documentary A Família Braz. In 2010 the same directors return to the same house to update the portrait of the six characters. A decade later, what has been done with your expectations of the past, how you live life in the present and what to provide for the future.

Sidarta Ribeiro, a Brazilian neuroscientist, explores how dreams and other forms of access to the unconscious can transform human experience. In his research, he proposes combining the ancestral knowledge of indigenous peoples and people of African origin in Brazil with scientific knowledge, as well as a scientific reevaluation of experiences with hallucinogens.

In 1979 and 1980, workers in São Paulo’s metallurgical industry organized a series of strikes that changed the face of union politics in Brazil. In the process, they established the groundwork for Brazil’s Worker’s Party and brought to the national spotlight union leader Luís Inácio Lula da Silva. Metalworkers is a feature-length documentary about the stories of 21 of these workers who took part in these historic strikes but remain in relative anonymity today.

A look into the 25 years of career of famous musician Chico Buarque and his influence in Brazilian culture.