João Dumans was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Since 2004, he has been working as a programmer, teacher, scriptwriter and director in different areas of artistic production, focusing on the intersection between film, literature and theatre. In the films he has directed, as well as in those in which he has collaborated as a scriptwriter and editor, he has dedicated himself to reflecting on the contradictions of Brazilian reality through documentary and fiction, addressing the difficulties, desires and subjectivity of the marginalized and excluded from economic and social processes. He is currently the coordinator of the Centre for Audiovisual Production of the Galpão Theatre Group, in Belo Horizonte, where he guides collective works and creative processes located on the border between theatre and cinema.
His first feature film Arábia (2017), co-directed with Affonso Uchoa, won the awards for Best Film, Editing, Actor and Soundtrack at the 50th Brasília Film Festival in the year of its release, and has been screened in more than a hundred festivals around the world, such as the Rotterdam Film Festival (Tiger Competition), BFI, San Sebastian, New Directors/New Films, FID Marseille and Viennale. It has also been released in commercial theatres in Brazil as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador and the United States, where it received the Tropical Awards in 2018.
João Dumans has also worked as a screenwriter and editor in films that have become central references in Brazilian cinematography in the last twenty years, and have won many awards in Brazil and abroad. Among them, Os Residentes, by Tiago Mata Machado (exhibited at the Berlin Film Festival Forum, 2010, and voted Best Film at the Tiradentes Film Festival, 2011); A Vizinhança do Tigre (Best Film at the Tiradentes Film Festival, 2014); Sete Anos em Maio (awarded in the Burning Lights section of the Visions du Réel festival, 2019), by Affonso Uchoa and A Cidade onde Envelheço, by Marília Rocha (presented at the Tiger Competition of the Rotterdam Film Festival and elected best film at the Brasília Film Festival, 2014).
In addition, he has worked as a researcher and script consultant in partnership with Brazilian and foreign directors such as Nicolas Klotz, Marcelo Gomes, Cinthia Marcelle, Alfredo Manevy, Francis Vogner dos Reis, Clarissa Campolina, Juliana Antunes and Gregório Gananian.
His second feature film, As linhas da minha mão, will be released in the first half of 2023.