Mariana Just Mariana - Film Director & Photography

I started my career as a director with a lie. I was shooting a rapper called Xis for the newspaper Folha de São Paulo. The guy had it all including an awesome hit blaring on the radio called "Os mano e as mina". He asked me if I knew a music director who would be cool and not charge so much money to shoot the new video of his hit.

At that time I was the assistant of Adriano Goldman, a great cinematographer, also my friend and partner in life. He got me to work in many commercials and music videos with the most varied number of scene directors. I learned from watching the most impressive beasts in action and thought I could do that too. I had no doubt; I turned to Xis and said, "Yes I know, me! I am a director of music videos I can make you a cool video! I work for Academia de Filmes (where I in fact ended up working some time later) but I prefer to meet at my house, the studio is a mess, noisy, with people passing by and stuff ... "

He believed in me! So I produced, and directed the photography of the video that made the biggest success, which won the best hip hop video award on MTV that year and launched myself as a director. Directing was (and still is) my greatest passion.

Early in my career, I had won an award and I was preparing myself to make a living out of cinema and photography, when I met my second husband, Seu Jorge. We had a very strong sexual chemistry and we practically threw ourselves at each other.

The result came quickly. I was pregnant after 3 months of dating. From there everything changed. There we were the two of us, poor, at the beginning of our careers. He was a singer and incredible talented actor, and me, a woman wanting to become a film director and pregnant in Brazil, not a promising scenario. So I started to help him in his career. I started to answer the phone, finding gigs, signing contracts ... so I turned into a businesswoman of the showbiz without realizing it.

I liked this new universe, this whole thing of the entertainment industry walks arm in arm with what I had learned in film production school, which only came to add up to me.

During this marriage we built an empire. We consolidated Seu Jorge’s career and our family. I kept insisting on my biggest dream of film directing. It was not always easy and many opportunities fled from my hands, some I could grab and reconcile interests.

During this period I produced what was necessary for Seu Jorge’s career. Directed 2 music DVDS with him, "Ana & Jorge" in partnership with Sony Music and the "America Brazil" in partnership with Universal Music. During those years I directed in parallel AD commercials and Music Videos. It was a way to continue exercising cinema and photography in parallel with my new business woman. Which brought me so much money that I could not stop doing it.

The dream of film directing never died in me. Today, 15 years later, divorced , in love, I am still a fierce business women. However directing completes me as dreamer, being a mom makes me whole human being.