Luiz Fernando Carvalho, Brazilian director, producer, and screenwriter
Luiz Fernando Carvalho (born July 28, 1960 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian filmmaker and television director, known for works closely linked to literature that constitute a renovation in Brazilian audiovisual aesthetics. He has already brought to the screen works by Ariano Suassuna, Raduan Nassar, Machado de Assis, Eça de Queirós, Roland Barthes, Clarice Lispector, Milton Hatoum, José Lins do Rego and Graciliano Ramos, among others.
Some critics compare Luiz Fernando Carvalho's productions to the Brazilian Cinema Novo and icons of film history such as Luchino Visconti and Andrei Tarkovsky. His work is characterized by visual and linguistic experimentation and exploration of the multiplicity of Brazil's cultural identity. The baroque style of overlays and interlacing of narrative genres, the relation to the moment in Time, the archetypal symbols of the Earth and the reflection on the language of social and family melodrama are features of the director's poetic language.
The filmmaker's works have met with both critical and public acclaim. He directed the film To the Left of the Father (Lavoura Arcaica) (2001), based on the homonymous novel by Raduan Nassar, cited by the critic Jean-Philippe Tessé in the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma as a "ground-breaking promise of renovation, of an upheaval not seen in Brazilian cinema since Glauber Rocha, which won over 50 national and international awards. The telenovelas Renascer (Rebirth) (1993) and The King of the Cattle (O Rei do Gado) (1996), by screenwriter Benedito Ruy Barbosa and directed by Luiz Fernando Carvalho, are recognized as benchmarks of Brazilian television drama and achieved some of the highest audience ratings of the 1990s.There is a marked contrast between the director's television works: from the pop design of the 60s in the series Ladies' Mail (Correio Feminino) (2013) to the classic rigor of the mini-series The Maias (Os Maias) (2001), the urban references of the working-class suburbs in the mini-series Suburbia (2012) to the playfulness of the soap My Little Plot of Land (Meu Pedacinho de Chão) (2014), the aesthetic research of the Sertão (backcountry) in Old River (Velho Chico) (2016) to the Brazilian fairytale of the mini-series Today is Maria's Day (Hoje É Dia de Maria) (2005) and the realistic universe of family tragedy in Two Brothers (Dois Irmãos) (2017).The director's production process is renowned for identifying new talent from all over Brazil and for training actors, revealing new stars of the dramatic arts such as Letícia Sabatella, Eliane Giardini, Bruna Linzmeyer, Johnny Massaro, Irandhir Santos, Simone Spoladore, Caco Ciocler, Marcello Antony, Marco Ricca, Isabel Fillardis, Giselle Itié, Emilio Orciollo Netto, Sheron Menezes, Jackson Antunes, Maria Luísa Mendonça, Eduardo Moscovis, Jackson Costa, Leonardo Vieira, Cacá Carvalho, Luciana Braga, Julia Dalavia, Renato Góes, Cyria Coentro, Marina Nery, Júlio Machado, Bárbara Reis, Lee Taylor, Zezita de Matos, Mariene de Castro and Lucy Alves, among others. The director's actor coaching technique has given rise to a method recounted in the book O processo de criação dos atores de Dois Irmãos (The creation process of the actors in Dois Irmãos), by the photographer Leandro Pagliaro.