Walter Salles
Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. (born April 12, 1956) is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence.
Works
Manas
Thirteen-year-old Marcielle lives on Marajó Island in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. To break a terrible cycle that imprisons the women around her in an isolated region, she must do the impossible to liberate herself and her younger sister from a dark abyss of silence held by her own family.
Release Date:2025-03-26
Department:Production
Job:Associate Producer
I'm Still Here
In the early 1970s, the military dictatorship in Brazil reaches its height. The Paiva family - Rubens, Eunice, and their five children - live in a beachside house in Rio, open to all their friends. One day, Rubens is taken for questioning and does not return.
Release Date:2024-09-19
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:340
New World
Conceição and Presto, an interracial couple, ask Presto's brother for his signature as a guarantor of the financial request supposed to assure them an apartment in Leblon, the whitest neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The process proves to be much harder than they had imagined.
Release Date:2024-05-23
Department:Production
Job:Associate Producer
Vote Count:1
Noah's Ark
A pair of mice attempt to board Noah's Ark: Vini, a charismatic poet with terrible stage fright, and Tito, a talented and charming guitarist. When the rains come, only one male and one female of each species is allowed on Noah's Ark. With the help of an ingenious cockroach and fate's good luck, Vini and Tito sneak their way onto the Ark and together avert a showdown among the ships carnivores and plant eaters. All the while, the animals perform a series of classic songs inspired by world renowned poet, Vinicius de Moraes. Can these talented stowaways use music to break the tension and help these cooped up creatures survive the 40 days and 40 nights together?
Release Date:2024-01-05
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:94
The Movie Teller
María Margarita is the youngest of four siblings in a family living in a mining town in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The most special time of the week for this family is Sunday, when they all go to the movies to enjoy stories that let them escape their everyday lives by transporting them to other worlds. The girl’s parents soon realise that the little girl has a very special gift: an almost uncanny ability to recount movies. The girl’s extraordinary talent will spread throughout the village, changing the fortunes of her family as the country is transformed forever.
Release Date:2023-10-27
Department:Writing
Job:Screenplay
Vote Count:23
Mariner of the Mountains
Using his personal background, Brazilian Karim Aïnous invites the audience to follow/discover an incredible journey through space and time, with an original and usually unknown prism/aspect : The strong bound between Algeria and Brazil, two countries with political and revolutionary strikes that mould their evolution.
Release Date:2023-09-28
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:5
Narcissus Off Duty
Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso reflects on his imprisonment in 1968, during the military dictatorship.
Release Date:2020-09-08
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:8
Burning Night
Down on his luck and recently divorced, Paulo has begun driving a cab around Rio, hoping he’ll make enough to send his ex money to support their ten-year-old son. He mostly works nights, so in addition to his encounters with a colourful variety of customers, colleagues, cops and others, he must cope with loneliness, fatigue and new faces in his life.
Release Date:2020-05-21
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:6
Homing
In the bucolic countryside of Brazil, Marcelo, an easygoing cowboy at a cattle farm lives for one passion: rodeos. One tragic incident affects him deeply. Little by little he overcomes the trauma and is ready to dream again.
Release Date:2019-11-21
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:1
Irmãos Freitas
Release Date:2019-10-20
Department:Creator
Job:Creator
Vote Count:4
Unremember
Teenager Joana feeds her soul with literature and rock. In 1979, when amnesty is granted in Brazil, she's forced to move with her family from Paris back to the country she barely remembers. Back in the city she was born in, and where her father was forcedly disappeared, she recovers pieces of memory from a fragmented childhood in Rio de Janeiro. Not everything is real, not everything is imagination. And as she remembers, Joana must write her own story in the present tense.
Release Date:2019-06-20
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:17
Vozes de Paracatu e Bento
The documentary “Vozes de Paracatu e Bento” shows how the cities of Paracatu de Baixo and Bento Rodrigues live after the collapse of the Samarco dam, in Minas Gerais. A story of belonging, passion and resistance is drawn on screen through the testimony of its residents. At the same time, a panel of abandonment in which Brazil finds itself is being shown in the documentary.
Release Date:2018-08-11
Department:Directing
Job:Director
When the Earth Trembles
The story of a family who has their lives crushed by the tragedy of the floods in Mariana (Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Release Date:2017-12-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1
Where Has Time Gone?
A short film omnibus featuring the work of five directors representing five countries involved in the 2017 BRICS summit, an annual international relations conference held between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The collection—taking the concept of time as a unifying theme—depicts the economic, political, and social alienations and contradictions that create, compound, and structure issues as wide-ranging as poverty, class stratification, and homeless; familial distress; spousal abuse; and natural disaster.
Release Date:2017-10-19
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:4
Aquarius
Clara, a vibrant former music critic and widow with flowing tresses is the only remaining apartment owner in a beautiful older building targeted for demolition by ruthless luxury high-rise developers. Clara proves to be a force to be reckoned with as she thwarts the builders plans to kick her out of the apartment.
Release Date:2016-09-01
Department:Production
Job:Co-Producer
Vote Count:466
From Afar
Examines the struggles of a man petrified by the notion of human contact and intimacy. Armando, aged 50, cruises young men in the streets of Caracas and pays them to come back to his house. He also regularly spies on an older man with whom he seems to have ties from the past. One day he meets 17-year-old Elder, leader of a small band of thugs. Their turbulent relationship will come to mimic the violent, passionate, oppressive unpredictability of the city around them.
Release Date:2016-01-21
Department:Crew
Job:Thanks
Vote Count:123
Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang
Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns to the shooting locations of his films, along with his actors, friends and close collaborators. Jia recalls the inspiration sources for his movies, such as Platform, Still Life and A Touch of Sin. The film is the memory of a filmmaker and of a country in convulsion, China, which reveals itself little by little.
Release Date:2014-10-20
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:12
Venice 70: Future Reloaded
Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.
Release Date:2013-08-28
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:15
VINTE - RioFilme, 20 anos de cinema brasileiro
The documentary VINTE - RioFilme, 20 anos de cinema brasileiro is a celebration of these two decades of Brazilian cinema, revealing the role of RioFilme in its recent history. Created in late 1992, shortly after the impeachment of Fernando Collor and shortly before the Audiovisual Law, RioFilme is the daughter of our democratic consolidation and the mother of the recovery, which contributed to and often inaugurated different phases of Brazilian cinema, until the current strengthening of its economy and the multiplication of the diversity of its films.
Release Date:2013-05-13
Character:Self
Habi, The Foreigner
Analía’s mother sends her to Buenos Aires to deliver some handicrafts. She is expected to return home quickly to the country town where she is to take on her family’s hairdressing salon. But by chance an address mix-up leads her to a Muslim community where she finds herself taking part in a ritual completely unknown to her. Enthralled by the new world she has entered, Analía decides on the spur of the moment to take on another identity.
Release Date:2013-02-12
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:6
On the Road
Dean and Sal are the portrait of the Beat Generation. Their search for "It" results in a fast paced, energetic roller coaster ride with highs and lows throughout the U.S.
Release Date:2012-05-22
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:845
Construção
The trajectory of Branca, a 3 years old Brazilian, and Marcos. They never met in life before seeing themselves on screen. Branca travels to Cuba, her father homeland, in the anniversary of the revolution.
Release Date:2011-10-01
Department:Production
Job:Associate Producer
Vote Count:4
The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell
Friends of the recently deceased Quincas take their pal's body on one last tour of his favorite spots in Brazil's Bahia.
Release Date:2010-05-21
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:39
Stories on Human Rights
20 short films about human rights.
Release Date:2008-10-23
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:3
Linha de Passe
In the periphery of São Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dênis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier.
Release Date:2008-09-05
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:41
Café de los maestros
Coffee Masters is a documentary by Miguel Kohan, produced by Lita Stantic, Gustavo Santaolalla and Walter Salles. It tells the story of great tango of the old guard who, summoned by a rock musician, proposing a record to demonstrate its validity. This adventure, full of memories, humor and poignant moments, culminating with a presentation of the Masters at the Teatro Colon.
Release Date:2008-06-26
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:5
Lion's Den
Julia, a 25 year-old university student, two weeks pregnant, with no criminal record, is sent to prison. Julia murdered the father of her child. This story addresses maternity, jail and Justice; confinement, guilt and solitude; but above all it deals with Julia and her son, Tomas, born inside an Argentinean prison.
Release Date:2008-05-29
Department:Production
Job:Co-Producer
Vote Count:59
Critic
Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.
Release Date:2008-01-22
Character:Self
Vote Count:19
To Each His Own Cinema
Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.
Release Date:2007-10-31
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:138
Love for Sale
In northern Brazil, Hermila patiently waits for her husband. However, he has abandoned her. Sexy, restless and resolute, she raffles off "a night in paradise" with herself. This beautifully-shot portrait doesn't shy away from the burdens of a young scarred woman, but it also celebrates her courage to live according to her own rules.
Release Date:2006-11-17
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:59
Born and Bred
In Patagonia, a successful interior designer's life falls apart after he suffers a horrific accident.
Release Date:2006-10-19
Department:Production
Job:Co-Producer
Vote Count:13
Paris Je T'aime
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
Release Date:2006-06-21
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:760
Beneath the Surface: The Making of 'Dark Water'
Release Date:2005-12-26
Character:Self
Vote Count:2
Dark Water
Dahlia Williams and her daughter Cecelia move into a rundown apartment on New York's Roosevelt Island. Dahlia is in the midst of divorce proceedings, and the apartment, though near an excellent school for her daughter, is all she can afford. From the time she arrives, there are mysterious occurrences—and there is a constant drip from the ceiling in her daughter's bedroom…
Release Date:2005-07-08
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1025
Lower City
Best friends Deco and Naldinho co-own a cargo boat in Brazil's Salvador da Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna, and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bounds of their friendship to the limit.
Release Date:2005-05-16
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:84
Hermanas
Argentinian sisters Elena and Natalia, who were separated, meet again in Texas in 1984.
Release Date:2005-04-14
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:12
The Motorcycle Diaries
Based on the journals of Che Guevara, leader of the Cuban Revolution. In his memoirs, Guevara recounts adventures he and best friend Alberto Granado had while crossing South America by motorcycle in the early 1950s.
Release Date:2004-02-06
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:1300
Traveling with Che Guevara
In 1952, Ernesto Guevara, then a medical student aged 23, and his friend Alberto Granado, a biologist of 29, began a long journey through the South American continent. During their tour, which began with an old motorcycle to continue after hitchhiking, they witnessed the harsh living conditions of the population of the countries they travelled. Guevara, soon to be known as Che, recorded his impressions in a diary. In 2002, the Brazilian director Walter Salles began shooting a film about that odyssey, "The Motorcycle Diaries". This documentary follows the making of that movie in detail, incorporating interviews with various participants.
Release Date:2004-01-01
Character:Self
Vote Count:4
Madame Satã
A story inspired by the life of one of the most remarkable figures in Brazilian popular culture, João Francisco dos Santos (1900-1976). In turn, bandit, transvestite, street fighter, brothel cook, convict and father to seven adopted children, dos Santos – better known as Madame Satã – was also a notorious gay performer who pushed social boundaries in a volatile time.
Release Date:2002-10-03
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:77
El bonaerense
Zapa is a locksmith in a quiet and little town lost somewhere in the province of Buenos Aires. After getting involved in a crime, his uncle, a retired policeman, bails him out and sends him to Buenos Aires city so he can become an aspiring police officer. Soon he will get involved in a new type of corruption.
Release Date:2002-09-19
Department:Crew
Job:Thanks
Vote Count:30
City of God
In the poverty-stricken favelas of Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, two young men choose different paths. Rocket is a budding photographer who documents the increasing drug-related violence of his neighborhood, while José “Zé” Pequeno is an ambitious drug dealer diving into a dangerous life of crime.
Release Date:2002-08-30
Department:Production
Job:Producer
Vote Count:7523
At the Edge of the Earth
On 17 May 1931, the young director Mário Peixoto released his masterpiece "Limite" in a premiere in Capitólio Theater in Rio de Janeiro to astonished audiences bewildered by the impressive and poetic images. Considered by many viewers the best Brazilian movie ever made, this feature has never been released commercially. However, in a great paradox, Mário Peixoto has never made any other movie. The director Sérgio Machado pays a great tribute to the life and work Mário Peixoto a.k.a. Maçarico by his close friends with this documentary, using his diary; footages of "Limite", the never concluded "Onde a Terra Acaba" (1933) and the short "O Homem do Morcego" (1980); and interesting testimonies of Olga Breno, Ruy Solberg, Nelson Pereira dos Santos and Walter Salles among others.
Release Date:2002-07-07
Character:Self
Vote Count:6
Conquista Central Station - The 7 days of creation
Exclusive record of the filming of Central do Brasil in Vitória da Conquista in 1997. The ProVídeo Uesb team had access to the backstage, testimonies from the team, actors and director Walter Sales, keeping unique moments from one of the most emblematic films of what came to be known as Cinema da Retomada. A project carefully thought out by cultural producer Jorge Melquisedeque, the video ended up not being produced by him - who would die in 2001. All the raw tapes were rescued in 2002 and edited with the script by Marcelo Lopes (based on Jorge's chronicles about the period) and directed by Esmon Primo for the tribute program to the 10 years of the Indiscreet Window Cine Vídeo Uesb Program.
Release Date:2002-05-01
Character:Self
Uma Pequena Mensagem do Brasil ou (A Saga de Castanha e Caju Contra o Encouraçado Titanic)
The six-minute film is shot in just two locations: an old movie theater in the city of Miguel Pereira (RJ) and a multiplex in the New York City Center, in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca. In front of the old movie theater, the embolistas Castanha and Caju (actually Cajuzinho, the replacement for the original Caju, who died in June 2001) unravel an extremely biting and funny "embolada", which spares no Hollywood idols: from Stallone to Leonardo DiCaprio.
Release Date:2002-04-06
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Behind the Sun
Brazilian badlands, April 1910. Tonho is ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother. The young man knows that if he commits this crime, his life will be divided in two: the twenty years he has already lived and the few days he has left to live, before the other family avenges their son's death. He is torn between fulfilling his ancestral duty and rebelling against it, urged by his younger brother Pacu. That's when a tiny travelling circus passes through the vast badlands where Tonho's family lives.
Release Date:2001-12-12
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:116
A Linguagem do Cinema
Release Date:2001-03-15
Vote Count:1
Adão ou Somos Todos Filhos da Terra
A resident of the Cantagalo favela in Rio de Janeiro, Adão Xalebaradã is the composer of more than 500 songs and has never been recorded in Brazil.
Release Date:1999-01-02
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Midnight
On December 31st 1999, destiny brings a fugitive prisoner and a depressed middle class teacher together, as the new millennium approaches bringing hope to everyone.
Release Date:1998-08-12
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:9
Central Station
An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.
Release Date:1998-04-03
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:931
Foreign Land
During a time of political upheaval in Brazil, two strangers meet by coincidence in a foreign land and end up caught in the middle of a gem smuggling ring.
Release Date:1996-09-04
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:49
Socorro Nobre
When the inmate Maria do Socorro Nobre reads an article about the Polish artist Franz Krajcberg in Veja magazine, she decides to write a letter to him. Socorro was sentenced to more than twenty-one years in a prison for women in Salvador, Bahia, while Franz is a tormented artist that lost his family and lived his childhood in a ghetto in Poland but survived the Holocaust. Franz moved to Brazil and recovered life wish living close to nature and inspires Socorro to dream with life again.
Release Date:1995-11-08
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:3
João & Antônio
A documentary about the fathers of Bossa Nova: João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Release Date:1992-12-29
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Circuladô
Release Date:1992-01-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
High Art
Peter Mandrake, a North-American photojournalist becomes embroiled in South America's dangerous underworld of pimps, drug gangs and arms smugglers when he sets out to find the killer of a local call girl.
Release Date:1991-06-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Vote Count:11
Marisa Monte Ao Vivo
Release Date:1989-12-04
Department:Directing
Job:Director
Chico, or the Country of the Lost Delicacy
A look into the 25 years of career of famous musician Chico Buarque and his influence in Brazilian culture.
Release Date:1989-10-11
Department:Directing
Job:Director
China, o Império do Centro
A portrait of conteporary China from Tai-chi-chuan to chinese arts.
Release Date:1987-11-16
Department:Editing
Job:Editor
Krajcberg - O Poeta dos Vestígios
A touching documentary about artist Franz Krajcberg who moved from his home country to Brazil and started a life of environment activist.
Release Date:1987-01-01
Department:Directing
Job:Director