Before he directed The Secret Agent (Oscar-nominated for Casting, Best Actor, Best Picture, and Best International Feature) or the Cannes Jury Prize winner Bacurau, the Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho made three horror shorts that proved hits on the international festival scene. Most prominent among these is The Green Vinyl, a dark fable inspired by a Russian folktale and filmed in a style that recalls Chris Marker’s La Jetée.

In The Green Vinyl, a mother gifts her daughter a box of old records and tells her she can listen to any of them except the eponymous one. But, soon enough, the daughter spins the green vinyl and strange things start to happen. Both playful and horrifying, Filho’s short toys with genre in much the same way his most recent features have. 

“I make my films on whatever format I can use. My films are about people, love and fear.” KLEBER MENDONÇA FILHO

Already an established film critic, Filho started making short films in the mid-90’s. At the time, he was interested in making Brazilian films that dealt with “the fantastique” — something that had fallen out of fashion in Brazil since the ‘60s. While this concern with the fantastic might call to mind high-budget productions, Filho cleverly found ways around this, directing short films that understood their constraints and creatively worked around them. The Green Vinyl is one such example — a bona fide spookfest accomplished with no more than still images and a voice-over.

Born in Recife, Brazil, in 1968, Kleber Mendonça Filho is a renowned filmmaker, film critic, and film programmer. He first broke out onto the film scene with Neighboring Sounds in 2012, which premiered at IFFR. His follow-up, Aquarius, was in competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and Bacurau, which he co-directed with Juliano Dornelles, received the Jury Prize at the same festival in 2016. He has since directed Pictures of Ghosts and The Secret Agent, two films that deal with the history and cinemas of his hometown. The latter has proven an international hit and earned Filho a myriad of awards and nominations, including four prizes at Cannes, two Golden Globe awards, two BAFTA nominations, and four Academy Award nominations.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Julie Chappell and NEON.