The Brazilian filmmaker Gregorio Graziosi was born in 1983, and graduated in Fine Arts and Film Studies at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado, in São Paulo, Brazil and had his first feature film Obra exhibited in the Discovery section of the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014, a distinguished international platform for nascent directors.

In Obra, João Carlos Ribeiro de Almeido Neto (Irandhir Santos) is beginning to feel the weight of his sizable name as he embarks on a major architectural project. Awaiting the birth of his first son, the young architect is going through a time of intense change, which is exacerbated by the discovery of some unexpected skeletons in his ancestral past. During the project’s excavation, a clandestine cemetery is unearthed from a piece of land belonging to his family. This leaves João grappling with some difficult moral questions about his inherited wealth and standing.

Obra also received the Fipresci Prize of Best Latin American movie and the Redentor Prize of Best Cinematography at Festival do Rio and the Coral Prize for Artistic Contribution in Havana. In total, it was exhibited in more than 20 international festivals.

He is currently developing his second feature movie, Tinnitus, produced by Zita Carvalhosa and Superfilmes. He has also taken part in the Cinéfondation in Cannes, an organisation that lends its support to the new generations of filmmakers – click here in order to find out more. Tinnitus tells the story of Marina, a former diver suffering from a terrible ear-buzzing affecting both her physical and emotional balance. Away from professional competitions after an accident suffered in the last Olympics, she decides to go back to competing in the hope of winning an Olympic medal, despite risking her life.

Resistance and endurance are recurring themes in Graziosi’s work. In Tinnitus, Marina is responding to stress and pressure. In his previous short movie, Saba, an old couple in São Paulo refuse to move out when all neighbouring houses are being demolished. The same idea is in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius, in the Official Competition of Cannes 2016. For Graziosi, “It may seem strange to talk about resistance in this context. You can resist regimes, injustice, but you can’t resist a city you live in.”

Mendonça Filho, whom he met in 2006 while working in Hamburg, is one of Graziosi’s role models.

Gregorio Graziosi can be reached at graziosigregorio@gmail.com.