São Paulo (Brasil), 1964

By Equipo Latinoamericana

Graduated from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo (USP), she participated in the creation of some of the main children’s programs on Brazilian public television. She worked as a screenwriter for various productions before directing short films and making her own feature films, including Durval Discos (2002), É Proibido Fumar (2009), and The Second Mother (Que Horas Ela Volta?, 2015). The latter established her as one of the best directors in contemporary Brazilian cinema and was selected to represent Brazil in the bid for the 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The Second Mother explores the ambiguous and conflicted relationship between a domestic worker and the upper-middle-class family she works for, set against the backdrop of improving living conditions for workers in Brazil.