A Brazilian filmmaker living in Berlin, João is currently working toward a M.A. degree in Directing at Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, for which he received a scholarship of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. He previously graduated in Philosophy and Film Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin and studied Audiovisual Media at the University of São Paulo. Between 2018 and 2021, he was a student researcher at the Cinepoetics project “Audiovisual Rhetorics of Affect”, which used a software-based approach to investigate emotionalising strategies in film and television. In 2021, the script of his next short film "Ash Wednesday", a musical about police violence in Brazil, was awarded a production grant by the French festival War on Screen.