Inês, 51, lives happily within the routine she has chosen for herself: her work as a bank clerk, her frequent visits to a karaoke bar, and her quiet pleasure in observing and interacting with others. Her life is then unsettled by the encounter with Hélio, which stirs feelings she is not used to facing.
Selected for the São Paulo state LPG fund for Small and Micro Businesses (Brazil).
O Estuário
Documentary feature
The Santos estuary is a complex meeting point of diverse and contrasting realities. There, the most modern port facilities coexist with working-class neighborhoods, mangroves, and fishing villages. Every day, small boats navigate around the massive structures of the Port of Santos and divert enormous cargo ships as they carry passengers from one shore to the other. With its camera aboard, the film follows Roberto, a boatman who has worked there for over 40 years. Aware of his own finitude and of the constant transformations reshaping that world, and while revisiting memories and visions from earlier times, Roberto trains young Fabrício to take over his boat.
Awarded the La_Scam documentary writing grant Brouillon d’un rêve (France)
Grantee at CNC’s Fonds d’aide à l’innovation audiovisuelle (writing support) for documentaries (France)
Grantee at the São Paulo State LPG Low-Budget Feature Film Production Fund (Brazil)
2024
Grantee at CNC’s Fonds d’aide à l’innovation en documentaire de création (development support) (France)
Ninhada
Fiction feature
Raquel is a seven-year-old girl living in a peripheral neighborhood in a small city in the countryside of São Paulo state. She suffers constant bullying from the neighborhood children and finds refuge in a litter of orphaned puppies she discovers at an abandoned house. Meanwhile, at home, she witnesses the tensions between her mother, Francisca—who supports the family with a thrift shop — and her sister, Amanda, torn between her family duties and her desire for independence. The family’s routine is disrupted by the return of the father recently released from prison, Tião, whose presence exposes long-buried secrets and reopens wounds that never healed.
Milestones
2015
Member of the Filmes de Plástico development collective, supported by the BRDE/FSA PRODAV 03 – Núcleos Criativos federal fund.
Livusias
Hybrid feature
Ilha do Massangano is an island in the hinterlands between the cities of Petrolina (state of Pernambuco) and Juazeiro (state of Bahia). It is populated by a black community organized as a quilombo under a matriarchal system, where the eldest women are the primary guardians of knowledge and memory, passed down from generation to generation. There, it is said that the currents of the São Francisco river intertwine with other forces — those of caboclos, spirits, and saints — who have coexisted with the island’s inhabitants for as long as memory can recall.
Milestones
2023
Part of the the Enquadramento–Lira development collective, supported by the LPG/SPCINE municipal fund.
About
Based in São Paulo and active since 2010, Lira Cinematográfica is an independent production company dedicated to developing and producing author-driven cinema. Over the years, it has released more than 15 short films and three feature films. Its most recent title, Brazil–France coproduction “O Estranho”, directed by Flora Dias and Juruna Mallon, received support from the prestigious international funds Hubert Bals and Vision Sud Est and premiered at the 2023 Berlinale Forum.
The company’s present and future slate includes four new feature films: Caetano Gotardo's “Os Fantasmas Gentis”, currently in post-production; Juruna Mallon's “O Estuário”, a Brazil-France coproduction now in production and preliminary editing; and Thiago Ricarte's “Ninhada” and Camila Freitas’ “Livusias”, both in early development.
