CAA, RT Features Sign Up ‘Memory House’ Director Joao Paulo Miranda Maria (EXCLUSIVE)
Creative Artists Agency (CAA) has signed João Paulo Miranda Maria, writer-director of “Memory House,” the only Latin American feature chosen for this year’s Cannes Official Selection.
In further news, Miranda Maria is preparing two new feature films, one his English-language debut, with Rodrigo Teixeira’s Sao Paulo-based RT Features, producer of Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name,” James Gray’s “Ad Astra” and Karim Aïnouz’s “The Invisible Life.”
Both announcements come as Miranda Maria readies the bow today at San Sebastian of “Memory House,” his first feature, which is sold by Celluloid Dreams and produced by Brazil’s Be Bossa Entertainment and France’s Maneki Films. “Memory House” screened at Toronto Film Festival as part of its Discovery program.
Miranda Maria’s signing by CAA continues the agency’s energetic push into international, driven in part by the conviction that some of the most profitable movies made globally will be local breakouts, others by fresh talent moving into English-language filmmaking.
CAA’s signing “is a big step in my career, creating the opportunities to make even more ambitious films,” said Miranda Maria, adding that he couldn’t wait to “go much further. I have great aspirations and I appreciate CAA’s help to make them come true.”
Produced by RT Features, whose credits also include Robert Egger’s The Witch” and “The Lighthouse” and Olivier Assayas’ “The Wasp Network,” Miranda Maria’s next feature, “Bandeira” (“Flag”), is a revenge thriller to be shot in the Amazon rainforest.
“Flag” will be co-produced with France’s Les Valseurs, which scored an Academy Award nomination in January for the Tunisian village-set live short film “Nefta Football Club,” by Yves Piat.
Miranda Maria is also collaborating with Les Valseurs on the VR installation “Deusa Das Aguas” (Goddess of the Waters), which is described as a breakthrough immersive tale about gender issues that is set to be filmed in the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park next summer.
Miranda Maria is also working on another original picture with RT Features, which will mark his English-language debut.
One of the buzziest titles in San Sebastian’s New Directors section, its most major sidebar, “Memory House” headlines Antonio Pitanga, who starred in 1962’s “Barrovento,” the first film by Glauber Rocha, as Cristovam, a Black milk factory worker in a rich village in southern Brazil. He rebels against ostracism and abuse by tapping into the rich mythology of his native Brazilian north.
Joining Brazil’s fast-building canon of movies examining its urgent racial and social tensions, “Memory House” maintains Miranda Maria’s hallmark meticulously detailed static-camera sequence shots.
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