Biography
Lisbon, 1984. João Salaviza studied at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema in Lisbon and at Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires. In 2008, he worked as an assistant editor to Manoel de Oliveira on ECCENTRICITIES OF A BLONDE-HAIRED GIRL. He made his directorial debut with ARENA in 2009. The film received the Palme d’Or for Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival, a unique achievement in Portuguese cinema. In 2012, he premiered RAFA at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film. That same year, the Rotterdam Film Festival premiered his short CERRO NEGRO. MOUNTAIN, João Salaviza’s first feature film, had a celebrated world premiere at the Venice Film Festival – Critics’ Week in 2015. The film also marked the beginning of his artistic collaboration with Renée Nader Messora, who worked as assistant director. In 2017 and 2018, João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora premiered two short films together in the Official Competition of the Berlin Film Festival: HIGH CITIES OF BONES, written by Renée Nader Messora, who also wrote, produced and was director of photography on RUSSA. In 2018, the duo co-directed THE DEAD AND THE OTHERS, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival – Un Certain Regard, where it won the Special Jury Prize, presided over by Benicio del Toro. Following its success in Cannes, the film was selected for and received awards at dozens of international festivals, followed by theatrical releases in several countries. In France, the film was seen by 45,000 cinema-goers. Spanning three historical periods of the Krahô people’s resistance, THE BURITI FLOWER is the duo’s most recent film, marking a memorable return to the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, where they were once again awarded by the Jury of the Un Certain Regard section. The film was subsequently selected for more than one hundred international festivals and received twenty-five awards, with wide theatrical distribution in several countries. Its success attracted the interest of several television networks and streaming services, including Netflix and HBO, which screened the film. In 2024, Batalha Centro de Cinema published Passages, the first monographic book dedicated to the filmography of the directing duo.
