Filmmaking and story telling has always been in by blood.
With my dad being raised in Brazil and my mom in Uruguay, I grew up with a desire to experience and share other cultures through film. I graduated from the University of the Nation’s film school in 2006 and have directed projects in Israel, Bosnia, Denver CO, Guadalajara Mexico, Fresno CA, Minneapolis MN, Dallas TX and Kona HI.
In 2008, a shooting took place in at a small school in Denver Colorado that left two staff dead. Together with fellow filmmaker Andrew Strobridge, I co-directed and shot this feature length, award-winning
documentary. Living with the students and getting to know their struggles and triumph was key as we moved into the edit. We need to be true to who they were and simply let their lives play out on screen. Their approval at the premiere confirmed we had done just that.
After first hearing of sex trafficking in 2009, I joined up with fellow film school graduates and shot Sex+Money. This anti-sextrafficking documentary took us all over the US and set out to discover what the issue looked like within the United States. As the director of photography, it was key to film without interfering as we hit the streets in some of the seediest back alleys of our nation, all the while filming images that capture not only the reality of the issue but emotionally encapsulating the struggle of the victims. The FBI has said it is the “best documentary about domestic sex trafficking” and they, as well as other law enforcers are using it as part of their training. Most recently I directed a trans-media project for Chosen & Dearly Loved, advocating for orphaned children with special needs. It included three hours of documentary content, an Apple App for iPad/iPhone and a hardcover Walter’s Flying Bus – based on the art and dreams of Walter and his friends in Uganda.
With filming taking place mostly in Jinja Uganda, the producer in Los Angeles CA, artists in Guadalajara Mexico, animators in India, music production in Nashville TN, and post production done in Kona HI, this truly was an international project of which directing was truly a thrill.
Now based just north of Dallas, in a the growing city of Celina, I utlize my past experiences in every proejct I take on.
