These are just some of the works that I did in film in a career of over twenty years, mostly directing fiction and animation, but also writing for other directors. The stop-motion animation works were mostly co-directed with Lavinia Chianello (except for the more recent documentaries that have a little animation, made just by myself). The films are shown here in chronological order, but not all of them are here. For the rest of the stop-motion animation work, you can also see studioelementare.com, For the older and also the more recent film and video stuff, you can check my YouTube channel.

 

“O Oitavo Selo” (The Eighth Seal, 15′, Brazil, 1999)
Fiction, short movie. A man meets Death. A parody of Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”, but also something more. Winner of Best Screenplay at the Gramado Film Festival and several other international awards, a lot of them audience awards. Indeed the audience usually loved it. It was one of my earliest but still most successful films, and it was even commercially distributed. 

 

“Pesadelo” (Nightmare, Brazil, 15′, 2003)
Another early Brazilian short movie. A family receives an inconvenient visit. Winner of Best Short Film and Best Actors at the Gramado Film Festival and several other awards. It was meant to be a sort of parody of horror movies, but I am not sure how it holds up. It was a complicated production, and perhaps it shows in the final result. The actors, however, are very good, in particular Roberto Oliveira and Liane Venturella (the visiting couple), which were a pleasure to work with. 

 

“Il Dettato” (The Dictation, 4′, Brazil-Italy, 2004)
Stop-motion animation. Co-directed with Lavinia Chianello. An imaginative boy doesn’t manage to concentrate in class. Winner of several important international film awards, including Best Animation the Havana Film Festival. It was just our second stop-motion animation and we won a lot of awards. I think it still works very well despite its simplicity.   

 

“Fraulein Gertie” (Miss Gertie, 5′, Brazil-Italy, 2005)
Stop-motion animation. Co-directed with Lavinia Chianello. A normal day in the life of Fraulein Gertie. Winner of several important international film awards, including Best Film at Maremetraggio — we got a prize of 10,000 euros there, which was a huge amount of money back then. It is probably one of or most successful stop-motion movies. We also got distribution for this one, I think it was shown at Arte or some other fancy TV channel.

 

“Primogenito Complesso” (Firstborn Complex)
Stop-motion animation, 4′, Brazil-Italy, 2004. Co-directed with Lavinia Chianello.  A boy is jealous of his newborn brother. Winner of several important international film awards, including the Jury Prize at the Torino Film Festival. We went there personally and received the prize from the hands of Nanni Moretti. It was a really memorable occasion. It is still one of my favourite stop-motion works, very poetic and perhaps the best one visually (photography and art direction).  Sound editing is great too. 

 

“Até que a Sbórnia nos separe” (Until Sbornia do us part, 90 min, Brazil, 2013)
Animation, Brazil, 2013, 90 min. Screenwriting. Direction: Otto Guerra and Ennio Torresan. A film I co-wrote the screenplay (with Rodrigo John). Two musicians from the previously unknown land of Sbørnia have to grapple with slightly more modern times when the wall that divides it from the continent falls down. Animation, drama-comedy, freely inspired on the musical show “Tangos e Tragédias”, by Hique Gomez and Nico Nicolayevsky. It was a lengthy production, but I like the end result. I worked as a writer for several other projects for Otto Guerra, but this is probably the best one. 

 

“Puppen” (Dolls)
Germany-Italy, 2017, 14 min. Stop-motion animation film. Directed by Lavinia Chianello and Tomás Creus. Story by Lavinia Chianello. Produced by the Chemnitzer Filmwerkstatt. So far, this is the only one of our stop-motion animations that actually received funding to be made (all the others were independently produced). And yet, it was the least successful one, perhaps because of its length. It was shown only at a handful of festivals. Looking back, I think the screenplay could have been improved, and also the animation is not perfect. I think we tried to be too ambitious. Still, I think that the art direction is awesome, and some of the photography too. 

 

“Magdalene” (22′, Germany, 2019)
A short movie I wrote and directed in Germany, made with the help of the Chemnitzer Filmwerkstatt. A small and very independent production. I haven’t seen it in a while, I am not sure how good it is. Probably a bit too long, today I would have made it a bit shorter. The main actress in particular did a great job. Officially selected at Los Angeles Culver City Film Festival (US), Kosice Film Festival (Slovakia), and others. With Magda Decker and Filip Bayer. Art direction by Lavinia Chianello. Production by Ralf Glaser and assistance of the Chemnitzer Filmwerkstatt. 

 

“The Unending Film” (22 min, Germany, 2022)
So, I had a project for a new fictional short film project called “The Winter Tale”, where I would also work with the same actress from “Magdalene” and a few other local actors and crew, and we even started shooting the film. But we never managed to finish it. It was a disastrous production, right in the middle of the “Covid era”. So in place of the original film, I made this mix of documentary, fiction and animation telling the story of the failed fictional film project. Ironically, this was also a failed film project, because very few people have seen it. But I still like it. It is a very personal film, although probably not interesting enough for a large audience. I don’t know. Perhaps it would have been better if “The Winter Tale” had been made instead, but now it’s too late.

 

“Dreaming of Finland” (Finland, 27 min, 2024)
My last work so far. An unconventional documentary (or dreamcumentary?) about Finland. A poetic look at the country mixed with a few animation scenes illustrating dreams, with each segment focusing on a specific aspect of the country, such as nature and folk myths, the Finnish character, Finnish tango, Finnish happiness and religion in Finland. Filmed in Finland in 2023 during an arts residency at the Serlachius Museum in Mäntä-Vilppula. Very few people have seen this one too. I am probably not very good at documentaries. But I like it, in particular the animation dream scenes, which were done quickly and sometimes with green screen instead of an actual background, but still functioning in the context of the movie.