Breno Silveira

Breno Silveira
(Getty Images / El País)
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Brazilian film director and cinematographer, born in 1964; directed four feature films (also a couple of TV movies); 2 Sons of Francisco (2005) is the story of a poor man working hard to see his two sons becoming country music stars; that smells cheap melodrama, actually it is a simple and touching movie; Once Upon a Time in Rio (2008) navigates in the same waters as Cidade de Deus; the ocean is very large in the favelas of Rio and there are plenty of big fishes there to catch and pull out from them great stories; Along the Way (2012) is a road movie (and Brazil is big, you know), plus some past events to be exorcised, plus a man - boy story; the making of this movie started from a song obsessing Silveira; the song was Sentado à beira do caminho; Gonzaga (2012) turns again to a singer's biography (Luis Gonzaga, the king of Baião), plus the relation with his son; all this can sound too much melodrama and show, but Silveira has a genuine passion for Brazilian music and a genuine empathy for simple Brazilians, with their hard lives and big dreams; there is an interview with him in El País:

 La felicidad es como el ping pong, va y viene

(Iberic and Iberic-American Cinema)