A Visual Journal
It still feels unreal to write: O Profeta (2026) will have its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the festival’s main competition.
This film was born in Mozambique, out of patience, struggle, faith, and an almost stubborn belief in the power of cinema. To see it travel to Rotterdam and stand among films from around the world feels like the closing of one long chapter and the opening of another.
For me, this selection is not only personal. It belongs to a wider community: to Mozambican cinema, to everyone who believes that our stories matter, and especially to the community of Manjacaze.
O Profeta is the result of years of persistence and collective effort. It carries the voices, landscapes, and spiritual weight of where I come from. Seeing it recognized by IFFR is both humbling and deeply affirming.
IFFR 2026 will take place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from January 29 to February 8, 2026.
I’m grateful, overwhelmed, and ready to let this film be seen by the world.
O Profeta
Behind the Scenes
O Profeta
International Premiere
And then it happened.
O PROFETA had its world premiere in Rotterdam.
After years of making the film, carrying it with us, fighting for it and imagining what this moment could feel like, suddenly we were sitting in a full cinema watching it with an audience for the first time.
What made it even more special was having so many of the people who had been part of the journey there with me. That night, after the screening, we all sat together around one long table.
I remember looking around and feeling incredibly grateful. The film had brought all of these people together, from different places, around something we had made from home.
Rotterdam was the moment O PROFETA stopped belonging only to us and began its life in the world.
O Profeta
Mozambican/National Premiere Screening at the 16th KUGOMA Film Festival
A week before the Mozambique premiere of O PROFETA, Sousa Domingos and I had planned a surprise for the crew: nobody knew I was coming home.
I was supposed to quietly arrive at the cinema and appear unannounced during the Q&A.
Instead, my connecting flight was delayed and I missed the premiere completely. The people planning the surprise ended up being the ones surprised.
I joined the Q&A through WhatsApp, somewhere between airports, while back home a room had filled up to watch the film.
And somehow, that became more beautiful than anything we could have planned.
After years of carrying O PROFETA with us, taking it from place to place, the film had finally returned home and was being received with so much warmth. Seeing the room full, hearing how people reacted, knowing they stayed afterwards to talk about it, meant more to me than making the entrance I had imagined.
I wasn’t there in the way I had planned to be, but the film was.
And in the end, that was the real homecoming.
O Profeta
Screening at New Directors/New Films 2026
Screening at Moma and the Walter Reade Theater in the Film at Lincoln Center was such a dope honour. I was bubbling with excitment because I heard so many great things about this theater, I must say that when the lights went off and the movie started the experience blew my marbles! A memory to carry on forever with me. Especially being able to share this moment with the moz delegation in NY in
the picture.
When I was in Grade 6, a friend of mine once said to me, “Friendship is a cookie that never breaks.”
I don’t know why that sentence stayed with me all these years, but I thought about it again at MacDowell.
For seven weeks, MacDowell became a home. I arrived carrying a film that had been living inside me since 2013, and for the first time I had the space to truly sit with it and work on its first draft.
It gave me the rare gift of time and space to create, to think, to write, and to simply be with the work. But beyond that, it gave me people.
Friendships that I hope will last a lifetime. Conversations, meals, walks, laughter, silence, and moments that I know I will carry with me for years.
I arrived hoping to find space for one film. I left with much more than that: new dreams for other films, for my art, and even for my life.
Moments to remember, experiences to cherish forever, and the feeling of having been given something very special.
A gift.
Locarno felt special because so many parts of my journey came together in one place.
I had the chance to screen O PROFETA, while also presenting CHAPA 100 to the industry with my producer, Lara Sousa. Being there together, building the project, pitching it, and sharing conversations about its future made me feel very hopeful about the next steps for the film and about everything still ahead of us.
At the same time, it was beautiful to see the life that O PROFETA continues to have. Every new screening, every audience, every conversation around the film keeps surprising me. To see how it continues to be received, in different places and by different people, feels incredibly special.
But beyond the screenings and the pitching, what stayed with me most was the community. Meeting other filmmakers from across Africa and seeing the amount of talent, imagination and creative force around us was deeply inspiring.
There is something powerful about being able to support other filmmakers and, at the same time, feel supported yourself. To realise that the doubts, the obsessions, the difficult ideas and the dreams you carry are also being carried by others.
For a few days, filmmaking felt a little less lonely, and all of us felt a little less crazy.
The Realness Institute Creative Producer Indaba was a very special experience because it unfolded over time, allowing relationships, ideas and questions to grow naturally. More than thinking about films, it became a space to think about life, about the kind of future we want to build, and about how our work can exist within that life.
There was something powerful about being surrounded by a community of people who were also dreaming, making plans and then finding ways to turn those dreams into action. It made the process feel less lonely. We were not only talking about projects, but about who we wanted to become, how we wanted to work, and what kind of lives we wanted to create around the work.
That feeling of dreaming together, while also taking concrete steps forward, is something I carry with me from the Indaba.
O Profeta Original Soundtrack
Working with TRKZ on O Profeta was about finding the inner sound of the film — its spirituality, tension and silence. The music slowly became part of the film’s identity, not just something accompanying the images.
Now, with the soundtrack released as an album last Friday, those songs gain a whole new life. They were born from O Profeta, but they can now exist beyond the film, travel on their own, and mean something completely different to each person who listens.
O Profeta (Original Soundtrack) by TRKZ is now available on all digital platforms.
The playlist :
- Intro
- Senhor, Quem Entrará
- O Evangelho
- Palavras ao Vento
- Noite Tranquila
- Perdido no Mar
- Consolador
- Missa de Domingo
- Frio de Julho
- Senhor, Tem Piedade
- Milagre
- Na Mão de Deus
- Na Mão de Deus II
- Funeral
- Tsutsuma
- Kutsakeni Ka Mina
- Minkateko
Atlas Workshop 2025 - Lost Sketchbook
I lost my sketchbook at the Atlas Workshop in the Marrakech International Film Festival 2025, and that sucks big time! I still haven’t recovered from that, but this is one of my favourite moments that I sketched. A Creative lab with the brilliant Hiam Abbass
Atlas Workshop 2025 - Pitching
It was the first time Sousa and I stood side by side to pitch Chapa 100. We were both shaking a little, pretending we weren’t. But once the nerves softened, something beautiful opened up, a room full of kindness, community, and filmmakers who genuinely wanted each other to do well. It meant a lot more to me than I expected.
Atlas Workshop 2025 - Awards & Closing
Blessed to share the stage and moment with an amazing bunch of filmmakers and to be surprised with such support in the development of our film Chapa 100.
When they called my name:
“Knees were weak, arms were heavy.”
Acclaimed Romanian director Cristian Mungiu served as the patron for the 8th edition of the Atlas Workshops at the 2025 Marrakech International Film Festival
BUSHMAN
(A Forgotten Screenplay)
Logline: A delusional prankster who believes his jump scares grant strangers enlightenment accidentally scares a ghost and is cursed to literally turn into a tree, forcing a desperate quest for spiritual forgiveness.
My Inner Child
&
My Barber
INT. CAFE ROURE - DAY
The smell of coffee is omnipresent.
Her only drug of choice.
To awaken and rise like her voluminous hair.
Fierce & wild.
Her lion´s mane.
SON OF PLUTO - Work in ProgressA Story that I’ve been writing for a while, and allows me the freedom to draw and explore without boundaries while still aiming to connect with wonder and creativity.
O Profeta - Behind the ScenesFirst days on the set of our first feature-length film. We shot in the village of Manjacaze and its outskirts. At the time, it felt like a dream, and today it’s a cherished memory. Forever grateful for making this film with a shared spirit of community, deep care, and passion.
Picture 1 - Sousa Domingos (Our Producer holding the boom)
Picture 2 - Myself (director) & Denilson Pombo (DP)
,,
Old Sketchbook
A mix of sketches of people and ideas that left an impression on me... some turned into stories, others turned into memories.