joão pedro prado

a Brazilian filmmaker based in Berlin, João holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Directing from Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, supported by a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. He previously graduated in Philosophy and Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and attended courses in Audiovisual Media at the University of São Paulo.

His short documentary Panama, One-Way about a Corona-denying influencer screened at multiple European festivals in 2022 and was broadcast on German national television. His fiction debut Ash Wednesday, a musical addressing police brutality in Brazil, premiered in the Perspective German Cinema section of the Berlinale 2023. His short film Dead Period, co-produced with the United States, was shortlisted for the German Short Film Award 2024.

João’s graduation film Fission, a feature-length documentary on Germany’s nuclear phase-out, co-produced with ZDF’s emerging talent program Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, will premiere at CPH:DOX 2025. He is currently writing To Dream of Catfish, his feature debut supported by a script development grant from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.

“Everything has a story. Philosophy tells stories with concepts. Cinema tells stories with blocks of movement/duration.” – Gilles Deleuze.