Movies: João Moreira Salles

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....

"Master" is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho's film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a ...

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 ...

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 u...

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

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 s...

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. Wh...

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

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 C...

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....

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 per...

A film that began from zero. Without any previous research, characters, locations or established themes, a film crew arrives at the Paraiba backlands in search of people with stories to tell. In the town of São João do Rio Peixe, they discover the Ar...

A portrait of conteporary China from Tai-chi-chuan to chinese arts....

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, fi...

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, L...

Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso reflects on his imprisonment in 1968, during the military dictatorship....

César Benjamin was arrested in August 1971 during student protests against the Brazilian military dictatorship. Although he was a juvenile, he was tried as an adult and sentenced to 13 years in prison. Thanks to the ardent campaigning of his mother I...

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 ...

Tribute to the Carioca poet Ana Cristina Cesar, with quotes from Charles Baudelaire, Sylvia Plath, Czeslaw Milosz, T. S. Eliot, Armando Freitas Filho, Cacaso, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and Manuel Bandeira, accompanied by music from Billie Holiday....

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....