Affonso Uchoa is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker and visual artist. He was born in 1975 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and has been making films since the age of 16. He studied film at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte and, following his graduation in 2001, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to pursue his filmmaking career.
Uchoa's films focus on social and political issues in Brazil, specifically in the northeast of the country. His works have been shown at film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Toronto, and Rotterdam. He was a member of the jury at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2012.
Uchoa's first feature-length documentary, Entreatos (2010), was awarded the Prize for Best Film at the 2010 It's All True International Documentary Film Festival. Entreatos follows the daily lives of three people living in a small, rural town in Brazil and paints an intimate portrait of a community struggling to survive in an environment of poverty and deprivation.
In 2014, Uchoa directed Araby, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival and the Best Film Award at the Rio International Film Festival. The film follows a young man from the north of Brazil who is trying to escape his life of poverty by working in the gold mines of the Amazon.
Uchoa's third feature-length documentary, Aquarius (2016), was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Rio International Film Festival. The film follows a 65-year-old woman living in a condominium in the city of Recife, Brazil, who refuses to leave her home despite the efforts of developers to buy it and demolish the building.
Uchoa's most recent work is Bacurau (2019), which won the Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The film is a dystopian thriller set in a small Brazilian town in the near future, in which the citizens are forced to confront a mysterious enemy.
Uchoa's films have earned him international acclaim and have established him as one of the most important documentary filmmakers in Brazil. His work is marked by its commitment to social justice and his subtle, poetic style. He continues to explore the complexities of life in Brazil and is dedicated to creating films that will bring attention to the struggles of the country's most vulnerable populations.
