FISSION selected for CPH:DOX 2025

Fission (original title: Spaltung), João Pedro Prado’s graduation film from Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, co-directed with cinematographer Anton Yaremchuk, will have its world premiere at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen – one of the world's leading documentary film festivals. The film will be featured in both the Special Premiere and Science sections.

This year’s festival lineup includes works by renowned directors such as Ai Weiwei, Claire Simon, Albert Serra, Eliza Petkova, Alexander Kluge, Wang Bing, Jessica Sarah Rinland and Peter Kerekes.

The festival’s programming team described the film as follows:

“A warm film about a hot topic. Is nuclear power the future, or...? The locals of two small European towns throw themselves into the discussion in a film with humor and heart, even though the stakes are high.

The climate crisis, Germany’s nuclear phase-out and Russia’s war against Ukraine are just three of the heavy pieces in the dramatic game about the future of energy. A game with global and unpredictable consequences far beyond where the electricity will be coming from tomorrow. And in the middle of the game we find two small European towns with barely a thousand inhabitants each.

Gundremmingen in Bavaria is located around a deactivated nuclear power plant, while the small Polish town of Choczewo will open its first nuclear power plant in 2033. What do the good people on the ground think about it all? ‘Fission’ is a stylish film with humor and heart, all of which is a rare sight in films about science, big politics and – ultimately – the future of the planet.

Directors João Pedro Prado and Anton Yaremchuk waste no time in their joint debut, which takes a multi-faceted look at the deeply divided debate on nuclear power in particular, fueled by decades of pent-up emotion.”

Fission is a production by Michael Kalb in co-production with ZDF Das Kleine Fernsehspiel and Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Read more about the film on the CPH:DOX official website. World premiere on 21 March 2025, 16:30 at Empire Bio; second screening on 27 March 2025, 18:30, at Falkoner Biograf.

João Pedro Prado & Jacky Lai win award for artistic research

On December 10, 2024, the Institute for Artistic Research (IKF) at the Film University awarded the President's Prize for Artistic Research. Since 2015, the prize has supported experimental and innovative projects by students, doctoral candidates, and academic staff.

Following their successful collaboration on the interactive video exhibition maps.gaps at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 2023, João Pedro Prado and Jacky Lai have been awarded the sponsorship prize for their project: Of Likes and Lies – The Digital Power of the AfD.

What makes Germany’s far-right party AfD so successful on TikTok? Why are its videos – along with those of affiliated politicians and “independent” influencers – gaining traction among young voters? What insights can be drawn from the AfD's digital and audiovisual strategies to counteract them? Can their communication tactics be exposed and deconstructed to educate a younger audience?

With the help of the award's funds, Prado and Lai will investigate these questions through a desktop documentary and a media literacy workshop conducted in collaboration with a public school in Brandenburg – one of the regions where the AfD has seen its strongest support among young voters.

DEAD PERIOD shortlisted for German Short Film Award

This year, for the second time in history, there is a shortlist for the German Short Film Award (Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis). Two juries have selected the best entries from all the films proposed by the German film associations and institutions. The feature film jury selected its shortlist from 121 submitted films. DEAD PERIOD, the short film directed by João Pedro Prado and produced by Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF in cooperation with University of North Carolina School of the Arts, is one of five works selected for the category “fiction up to 10 minutes.”

In DEAD PERIOD, lifelong friends Caleb, an African American, and Duarte, a Latino, discover they're vying for the same college basketball scholarship. Their bond fractures as they face off, reflecting the plight of Dreamers – immigrants raised with uncertain legal status – in the contemporary U.S. American society. It stars Jason Sanchez as Duarte and Antony Littlepage-Buggs as Caleb.

The announcement was made public by the German Ministry of Culture. DEAD PERIOD will have its premiere in November 2024 at the youth section of the 38th Braunschweig International Film Festival.

João Pedro Prado wins script development grant by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg

João Pedro Prado has received a script development grant from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) to work with award-winning Brazilian author Ricardo Domeneck in 2025 on the screenplay for his debut feature film, TO DREAM OF CATFISH (German title: Von Welsen träumen), produced by Vincent Edusei and Maritza Grass of Carousel Film.

The film, inspired by Ricardo’s short story The Public Days, follows a middle-aged Brazilian poet who returns to Brussels from Berlin to retrace the remnants of a failed relationship with a much younger man. In doing so, he is confronted with the realization that he is aging while the world around him appears unchanged.

As described by João: “This project grew out of a long-standing friendship and creative collaboration with my co-writer, Ricardo Domeneck. We first met in São Paulo when I was 17, during a poetry reading he gave at my high school. Even then, Ricardo’s work struck a chord with me. His poems revealed a reverence for the sacred—rooted in his religious upbringing in the countryside of São Paulo —and a simultaneous veneration of the male body, reminiscent of ancient Greek ideals. Our shared Brazilian roots and the struggles we faced upon moving to Berlin bonded us. Over the years, we often exchanged stories, observing how our backgrounds—filled with conservative values, silenced family tragedies, and humor as a survival tool—shaped our perspectives on identity, language, and belonging.

When I first read Ricardo’s short story The Public Days in 2020, during the quiet intensity of the pandemic lockdown, I felt an immediate connection. The story centers around a failed relationship between an aging artist and a younger lover in Brussels, examining the artist’s longing to reclaim his past. This exploration of memory and identity struck me as an incredible foundation for a film, rich in visual metaphors and layered with intersecting timeframes, memories, and existential crises. I saw the potential to delve into a camp aesthetic that could balance humor with pathos, crafting a world where the cacophony of languages and interactions reflects the protagonist’s fragmented identity.”

FISSION finishes post-production

The feature-length documentary FISSION (Spaltung in German), directed by João Pedro Prado and Ukrainian cinematographer Anton Yaremchuk as their thesis film at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, has just completed post-production. The project was produced by Michael Kalb in co-production with Das Kleine Fernsehspiel, ZDF’s program for emerging filmmaking talent, with Vincent Edusei serving as the Film University’s producer.

FISSION is a creative, observational documentary that delves into the nuclear power debate in Germany and neighboring Poland. Through a variety of protagonists, the film explores the history and shifting perspectives on nuclear energy. At its core are the people of Gundremmingen, Bavaria—connected to a now-decommissioned nuclear plant—and the residents of Choczewo, a small town by the Baltic Sea in Poland, preparing to build the country’s first nuclear power plant by 2033.

The post-production team included editor Amélie Richter, sound supervisor and designer Eva Perhácová, and sound mixer Jonas Schüler. The film is scheduled for a 2025 festival premiere and television broadcast.

ASH WEDNESDAY goes to France and Brazil

After premiering at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, and its Spanish premiere at the prestigious FILMETS Badalona, ASH WEDNESDAY continued its festival tour this autumn with two significant stops.

The first was War on Screen in Châlons-en-Champagne—the festival where it all began. At WoS Fabrique, the festival’s lab for emerging filmmakers, the script for ASH WEDNESDAY received mentorship from Manele Labidi and was awarded its first production grant by the French region Grand Est. Screening the film at this festival felt like coming full circle, a gratifying return. Director João Pedro Prado, producer Vincent Edusei, cinematographer Kleber Nascimento, and production designer Claudia Valeria Barrantes Sotomayor attended the ceremony and participated in a Q&A with festival director Philippe Bachman.

In France, ASH WEDNESDAY was screened alongside its partner projects: An Orange from Jaffa by Palestinian director Mohammed Almughanni—who generously supported the German-Brazilian production with a €2,500 equipment grant from SeeYouRent—and Water Cooler War by French filmmaker Lisa Sallustio.

After France, the team headed to a festival of immense symbolic importance: the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. ASH WEDNESDAY was screened in the Première Brasil section of Brazilian cinema under The State of Things, a segment dedicated to politically engaged films. João Pedro Prado and Kleber Nascimento traveled from France to join co-director Bárbara Santos, co-author Bia Krieger, costume designer Gabriel Carneiro, and actor João Eduardo Albertini. The national premiere featured two parallel sold-out screenings at Estação NET Gávea. The film was programmed alongside Rapacidade, an experimental mid-length documentary exploring the erasure of Rio's port center's connections to the slave trade.

maps.gaps opens at Künstlerhaus Bethanien

João Pedro Prado and Jacky Lai have opened their video installation maps.gaps as part of the exhibition what we dream of – what we pay for at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien gallery in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

On one side lies the affluent neighborhood of Morumbi; on the other, Paraisópolis, the second-largest favela in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. These two worlds are separated by a single, long avenue: Avenida Giovanni Gronchi. In São Paulo, this "somber New York of the South," the wealthy enjoy unprecedented luxury, while the poorest freeze on the streets. maps.gaps uses Google Street View, audio commentary and found footage to create an interactive map of inequality, exemplified by this prominent street. By producing a palimpsestic map that reveals underlying social tensions, this project explores the topographic manifestations of injustice and asks: who ultimately has the right to the city?

João and Jack’s interactive map was presented alongside seven other works by scholarship recipients of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation that were curated by Beate Eckstein, Sarah Klaußner and Annelie Pohlen. Corona, climate chaos, war: The world is spinning with crises. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing concentration of property in the hands of a few is leading to extreme inequality and putting the future of social societies at risk worldwide. The global crises and the incalculable costs of this gap and ensuing injustice are the subject of this exhibition in which artists offer a unique view shaped by their varied biographies. Special attention is paid to groups on the margins of society. What do they dream of? And what price do they have to pay for the world’s crises?

maps.gaps is João Pedro Prado’s first-ever video-installation as well as João and Jack’s second artistic collaboration.

SPUK takes part in WinterClass 2022/23

SPUK, the horror series developed by João Pedro Prado and Vincent Edusei, recently completed its participation in the 8th annual WinterClass Serial Writing and Producing program, a prestigious advanced training initiative for future screenwriters and showrunners by Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and the Erich Pommer Institute (EPI). The program is led by Prof. Timo Gößler, head of screenwriting and dramaturgy at the university.

SPUK follows the story of Hannah, a law graduate from Munich who returns to her hometown at the request of her dying grandmother. She takes a position at an old law firm where dark forces appear to be at work. Hannah soon discovers that the paranormal occurrences are deeply rooted in her family’s mysterious past. The series is loosely inspired by the real-life “Haunting of Rosenheim” from 1967—one of West Germany’s most notorious unsolved paranormal events.

As part of WinterClass, João and Vincent contributed as staff writers for their colleagues’ projects, and vice versa. The WinterClass 2022/23 cohort also included Narges Derakhshan (Loulou), Nicolas Stille (BRD Noir), Paulina Peschken (Panopticon), Marieke Fritzen (SockHub), and Jessica Hölzl (Null).

ASH WEDNESDAY premieres at the Berlinale

ASH WEDNESDAY, directed by João Pedro Prado and Bárbara Santos, celebrated its world premiere on February 21, 2023, as part of the Küsse und Kämpfe program—a collection of three mid-length university films shown in this year’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at the Berlinale. The cast and crew shared their gratitude with a sold-out crowd at Berlin’s historic Kino International.

Critic Gunda Bartels of Tagesspiegel described Ash Wednesday as a “half-hour smash hit,” noting its captivating mix of Brazilian rhythms, bold colors, and fierce messages, which made it “the only formal surprise in the Perspektive lineup”.

In another Tagesspiegel article, Lena Schneider highlighted the film’s focus on police violence against Black Brazilians, a story told through a Portuguese-language musical brimming with Brazilian rhythms and tones. “‘That this film is part of Perspektive: What does that say about what German cinema is today?’ reflects Prado. This prospect excites him.”

ASH WEDNESDAY was produced by Schuldenberg Films and Vincent Edusei/Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. It was funded by War on Screen festival in France and the German Ministry of Culture (BKM).

ASH WEDNESDAY is selected for the 73rd Berlinale

The medium-length film Ash Wednesday, a musical João Pedro Prado directed alongside Bárbara Santos, was one of the ten films selected for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, the competitive section of up-and-coming German cinema at the Berlinale. Ash Wednesday ist the first film in the history of the section with an entirely Brazilian cast and spoken – in fact, sung! – in Portuguese. The full press release can be read on the Berlinale website.

The announcement becomes emblematic having arrived the morning after an attempted coup d’etat in Brasília. The supporters of the former president of Brazil are not only opposed to democracy, but to every form of social justice and diversity possible therein. It hurts them, barbarians, to watch the return of a government that promotes art and culture in its plurality, culture that has been asphyxiated in the last four years by systematic cuts and policy dismantling that have weakened a cinema that was flourishing with international recognition, including in Berlin.

It is also tragically ironic that Ash Wednesday, a film about the daily brutality of the military police against the Black and marginalised population of the country, is selected one day after the world watched the law enforcement of the Federal District act as an accomplice to the far-right terrorists who attacked republican institutions. The reconstruction of Brazil starts now, but there is a lot of work ahead.

Synopsis: In a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Demétria waits for her daughter on the last day of Carnival. But a brutal police raid seals the fate of the two women. Set to Brazilian rhythms, this short musical addresses racism and other social conflicts.

The film stars Uriara Maciel, Ronni Maciel, Jefferson Preto and João Eduardo Albertini. It is a production of Schuldenberg Films in co-production with the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. It was funded by the French film festival War on Screen and the German Ministry of Culture (BKM).

João Pedro Prado's theatre debut premieres at Film University Babelsberg

The play WAS GESCHAH, NACHDEM NORA IHREN MANN VERLASSEN HATTE ODER STÜTZEN DER GESELLSCHAFTEN (in English: “What happened after Nora left her husband…”), published in 1979 by Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, has been staged by João Pedro Prado at Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. It premiered on December 10th 2021 and is the director’s first project for theater.

Starring Emilie Neumeister, Hermia Gerdes and Lennart Thomas, the play picks up from where Ibsen’s A DOLL HOUSE left off, imagining a sequel in which Nora, self-liberated from her upper-class household and miserable marriage to Helmer, decides to finally “become human” by looking for a factory job. However, the heroine’s dreams of liberating herself and all women are quickly smashed one by one as she is met by the unavoidable structures of exploitation under capitalism.

This new staging has been conceived within a workshop conducted by the study programmes of MA Directing and BA Acting at the university. The mentors were Prof. Andreas Kleinert and Prof. Florian Hertweck. The premiere was filmed by Carolin Hauke and the promotional photos are by Sofia Lobianco.

Short documentary OH, WIE FREI IST PANAMA? finishes post-production

The German martial artist Yve firmly believes that the coronavirus pandemic is a global farce. Since she started sharing her views with thousands of followers via her Instagram account, she has moved further and further into the fringes of society, losing not only friends but also her job in the process. Together with her boyfriend, she has decided to emigrate to a country where she believes she can live and speak more freely: Panama. In PANAMA, ONE-WAY we accompany Yve during her last days in Berlin as she says goodbye to her dear ones – and delve into the life of a woman who has moved so far away from the social consensus that she is now willing to leave her people behind for good.

A production of the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Read more info about the film, its crew and its festival run on this page.

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PATRIOTS DON'T DIE is shown at Filmfest Dresden 2021

The 33rd round of Filmfest Dresden, one of the most important short film festivals in Germany, will run from 13 to 18 July 2021. In the four programmes designed for the MOVE TO CHANGE! FOCUS ON ACTIVISM section, the festival is attempting – on the basis of a wide spectrum of contributions and in cooperation with guest curators – “to reflect on pluralism, as indeed on the commonalities of political films, while posing the question of whether there is a globalised, activist cinematography.”

PATRIOTS DON’T DIE is being exhibited as part of the second programme of this section, called (DIS-)IDENTITY POLITICS. From the Black Lives Matter movement to the backlash of rightwing populism, the selected works from Argentina, Brazil, the United States and Germany purport to investigate how the relationship between film, politics and activism is being rebalanced in today’s mediatic-cultural field, what debate space the short film can open up and what social impact it can ultimately have.

João Pedro Prado during Q&A with curator Sven Pötting on 16th July at Schauburg Kino.

ASH WEDNESDAY wins production grant by French festival War on Screen

After being selected as one of the nine projects by film schools in Germany, Poland and France to take part in the Script Lab of the French film festival War on Screen, led in 2020 by author-director Manele Labidi, ASH WEDNESDAY was one of the three films to be awarded with a 15.000 EUR production grant by the jury, led by festival director Philippe Bachman.

The synopsis: It is the last day of carnival at a favela in Rio de Janeiro, where gunshot sounds are incessant and the military presence has been recurrent over the past thirty years. Demétria is waiting for Cora, her only child, to come back home from school, but in the meantime a surprise police raid commences outside. As night falls and she struggles to hold on to the fading hopes of finding her daughter, Demétria will be visited by three characters – The Policeman, The Pastor and The Governor –, all of whom play different parts in the never-ending war outside.

The film is conceived as a twenty-minute musical drama with surreal elements. Its plot is a loose adaptation of the Ancient Greek myth of the Abduction of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of fertility and agriculture. The idea to fall back on the motif of Ancient Greek mythology arose from our more elemental desire to tell the story of the thousands of Brazilian mothers who, every year, lose their children to the abstract idea of a “war on drugs” – a state-sponsored mass murder that has been disproportionately decimating the black youth of the country at a crescent rate for the past three decades.

João Pedro Prado will direct the film alongside playwright, director, actress and activist Bárbara Santos. She is the artistic coordinator of the KURINGA theater space in Berlin and founder of Ma(g)dalena International – Feminist Theatre of the Opressed Network, composed by groups from Latin America, Africa and Europe. Bárbara has developed innovative lines of aesthetic investigation focused on the intersections of gender, race and class, having written three books on the subject. As a performer, she explores the conversion of the performative body into a political body, as seen in her one-woman show Passage. More recently, she played the role of Filomena in The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Dir: Karim Aïnouz), winner of the Grand Prix of Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2019 and the Brazilian submission for the Academy Awards in 2020.

Early production of the project was led by Klara Otto, being later taken over by Vincent Edusei. ASH WEDNESDAY was written by the four hands of Beatriz Krieger, João Pedro Prado, Bárbara Santos and Uriara Maciel, who will also play the lead character of Demétria. Production is planned for April 2022 with a September 2022 festival release in France.

Crew:

Starring Uriara Maciel
Directing: João Pedro Prado & Bárbara Santos
Screenplay: Beatriz Krieger, João Pedro Prado, Bárbara Santos, Uriara Maciel
Producing: Vincent Edusei
Cinematography: Kléber Nascimento
Editing: Juliano Castro
Costume Design: Gabriel Carneiro

a co-production of the Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and schuldenberg films

PATRIOTS DON'T DIE is awarded at Storie Parallele Festival

The jury of the 2020 edition of the documentary film festival Storie Parallele in Salandra, Italy, awarded PATRIOTS DON’T DIE the Special Mention of the Jury. This year’s jury was formed by directors Maria Tilli and Gianfranco Pannone as well as actor Antonio Andrisani. The winner of this award is also granted future participation in an artistic residency in the Italian region of Basilicata. The statement of the jury:

“The jury marks with a special mention the documentary PATRIOTS DON'T DIE, by João Pedro Prado, crudely photographing the people of Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil, with a keen eye on the "belly" of the country that led him to power and that today minimizes the impact of covid.”

PATRIOTS DON'T DIE celebrates its Italian premiere in Bologna

PATRIOTS DON’T DIE is making its Italian premiere at the 2020 edition of Ce l’ho Corto Film Festival in Bologna. The event, which is hosted and organized by the local cinema Kinodromo, is taking place entirely online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival aims to give visibility to young authors of the independent audiovisual scene with a focus on short format, especially those without professional distribution.

João also took part in a virtual panel with Maddalena Bianchi and Yorgos Kostianis from the Ce l’ho Corto team. During the conversation, he answered a few questions about his short film and on Brazil’s current political climate ahead of the 2020 municipal elections. Here’s a snippet:

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Last but not least, critic Giada Sartori from Bologna’s BIRDMEN Magazine wrote the following words about the film: “João Pedro Prado looks at the present global pandemic and how, despite the evidence, some continue to deny the seriousness of the situation. He does so by showing a symbolic day for Brazil, his home country: March 15. If that day in 1985 saw the end of the Brazilian military government, in 2020 the streets of São Paulo are filled with deniers who, waving flags and banners, protest against the ‘virus of corruption’ or ‘communism,’ as some define it in the course of the short film. ‘We are patriots, not idiots’: this is their war cry, and as the title chosen by Prado says ironically, ‘patriots don't die.’”

“The point of view of the protesters is that of President Jair Bolsonaro, who has often downplayed the pandemic with statements such as ‘There’s nothing I can do, I'm sorry for the dead but we will all die one day.’ Joāo represents the circus of lies that occupies the streets of his city without mercy, moving from one individual to another like a silent fly. The question that the director seems to ask himself with PATRIOTS DON’T DIE is whether the deadliest virus of all is not fascism. To the contradictory and deleterious ideas of the deniers, he opposes the evidence with the final billboard: from March 15 to October 1, 143,000 Brazilians died from the virus.”