Lucas Estevan Soares
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Lucas Estevan Soares is a Brazilian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor from Curitiba, in southern Brazil. He founded the production company IHC in 2012 and has spent more than a decade making independent films as a director, writer and producer.
In 2011 he made Independent Roads (Trilhos Independentes), a series of seven short films he shot on his own while traveling through 27 countries across five continents, getting by with little more than a camera, no crew and no permits. He later took the project on the road, screening it at universities, festivals and cultural venues across Brazil, Europe, Africa and Latin America.
He went on to direct, write and star in his first feature, "Coração de Neon" (2023), a self-financed film set in Boqueirão, the working-class Curitiba neighborhood where he grew up. At Cannes, critics praised it as part of a new wave of popular Brazilian cinema, a film that blends crowd-pleasing storytelling with arthouse ambition. Mixed in Dolby Atmos 9.1, it screened at the Marché du Film in Cannes and went on to play in theaters across Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, picking up international awards along the way, including the Special Jury Remi Award at WorldFest-Houston and Best Foreign Film at the Moscow International Film Festival.
In 2011 he made Independent Roads (Trilhos Independentes), a series of seven short films he shot on his own while traveling through 27 countries across five continents, getting by with little more than a camera, no crew and no permits. He later took the project on the road, screening it at universities, festivals and cultural venues across Brazil, Europe, Africa and Latin America.
He went on to direct, write and star in his first feature, "Coração de Neon" (2023), a self-financed film set in Boqueirão, the working-class Curitiba neighborhood where he grew up. At Cannes, critics praised it as part of a new wave of popular Brazilian cinema, a film that blends crowd-pleasing storytelling with arthouse ambition. Mixed in Dolby Atmos 9.1, it screened at the Marché du Film in Cannes and went on to play in theaters across Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, picking up international awards along the way, including the Special Jury Remi Award at WorldFest-Houston and Best Foreign Film at the Moscow International Film Festival.
