Kleber Mendonça Filho (; born 3 November 1968) is a Brazilian film director, screenwriter, producer, and critic.
Life and career
With a degree in journalism from the
Federal University of Pernambuco
Federal University of Pernambuco ( pt, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, UFPE) is a public university in Recife, Brazil, established in 1946. UFPE has 70 undergraduate courses and 175 postgraduate courses. , UFPE had 35,000 students and 2,000 ...
, Kleber Mendonça Filho began his career as a film critic and journalist. He wrote for newspapers such as
Jornal do Commercio
Jornal do Commercio was a newspaper published in Rio de Janeiro. It was founded in 1827 by French journalist Pierre Plancher. It was the oldest newspaper in circulation in South America, until the last publication on 29 April 2016, when it cease ...
and
Folha de S. Paulo, for magazines such as Continente and Cinética, and for his own site, CinemaScópio.
As a director, he experimented with fiction, documentary, and video clips in the 1990s. He migrated from video to digital and 35 mm film in the 2000s. Over the course of that decade, he made several short films, including ''A Menina do Algodão'' (co-directed by Daniel Bandeira, 2002), ''Vinil Verde'' (2004), ''Eletrodoméstica'' (2005), ''Noite de Sexta Manhã de Sábado'' (2006), and ''Recife Frio'' (2009), as well as a feature-length documentary, ''Crítico'' (2008).
''O Som ao Redor'' (''
Neighbouring Sounds
''Neighboring Sounds'' ( Portuguese: ''O Som ao Redor'') is a 2012 Brazilian drama film directed and written by Kleber Mendonça Filho, produced by Emilie Lesclaux and starring Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn and Maeve Jinkings.
The film was s ...
,'' 2013) was Mendonça's first feature-length drama, winning numerous awards. Film critic
AO Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and cultural critic. He has been chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' since 2004, a title he shares with Manohla Dargis.
Early life
Scott was born on July 10, 1966 in ...
of ''The New York Times'' included it in his list of the 10 best films of 2012.
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso (; born 7 August 1942) is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo, which encomp ...
, in his column in the newspaper O Globo, classified it as "one of the best movies made recently in the world ". The critic Lucas Salgado of AdoroCinema website, gave the film a score of 5 out of 5, writing, "The film talks in a subtle way and uses sound so rarely seen in world cinema." Lucas reported that the movie is "beautif