Brazilian director: Paulo Diehl

Hugely influenced by the cinema of Scorsese and Coppola, Paulo Diehl is not a fan of the bells and whistles of special effects or too much post production, favouring the naturalistic approach. Caitlin McGee meets a young director with natural talent and the awards to prove it.

Brazilian Paulo Diehl always loved the idea of creating films, but it was his job as one half of a creative team for an advertising agency that landed him his first on-set experience. “As a creative and art director, I’ve always loved sets and loved to make films,” recalls Diehl. “But sometimes I would look at the films other people were making and think ‘yeah I can do that too’. So I started making small films inside the agency and then decided it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

So, after a 15-year career agency-side, Diehl shook off his art director tag and joined a production company to begin his path to becoming a fully-fledged director. He has won numerous awards, including accolades from Eurobest, and Art Directors Club of New York, plus, he bagged a bronze Lion at Cannes last year for his spot Boxes, which was shot through AlmapBBDO for Volkswagen. In 2006 he began directing and working through companies such as Cia de Cinema, Movi&Art, Sentimental and Conspiração Filmes, where he brought his vision to campaigns for clients such as Peugeot, Unilever and Honda.

Currently represented by Paranoid in Brazil, after the production company opened its doors there 11 months ago, Diehl has been directing now for five years. While commercials have been the lifeblood of his career so far, he still looks to the cinematic greats as his creative heroes. “I love the classic directors like Coppola and Scorsese – the guys from the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s,” he muses. “I like movies with good photography and good art direction. I don’t like films with lots of special effects or heavy post production. I’m a fan of the more naturalistic stuff.”

Diehl says he didn’t grow up in an artistic family and had to look to the cinema to feed his imagination: “I was always influenced by the cinema,” he states, “the movies were like my hobby and I’ve always had a passion for pictures and photography.” The São Paulo resident’s background in advertising still shines through in his work and still proves to be a strong aesthetic reference. “Because I started in advertising, I still look to it for my main inspiration and to see what is going on around the world.”

His career as a creative took him to Spain and Portugal, where he was associate creative director for Cathedral and Y&R respectively. But it was in Portugal in 2005 that his directorial talents really came to the fore when he was working as a set director with agencies such as JWT, TBWA and Lowe. In 2006 he returned to Brazil and since then he’s enjoyed a steady trajectory up the directing ladder.

Of the ad scene in Brazil he says: “Over the last 10 years the advertising industry has been focused on press and poster and we left film behind and treated it with less importance. Brazil has a lot of money to invest in television but it doesn’t put emphasis on creativity. We have a good industry here, there are nice locations, nice companies but I think we have a crisis in the quality of scripts. Maybe we need to rethink the filmmaking process and work in a more integrated way with agencies.”

Diehl says the current production formula is not one he is a fan of. He believes it is currently quite segregated, the procedure being that agencies write the script, send it to the production company and then wait for the result. Diehl prefers a more integrated system with more collaboration. “I like to work together as it makes a positive difference to the end result.”

Brazil ruled supreme at the recent Cannes Lions festival, with AlmapBBDO taking the Agency of the Year award, an accolade that went to DDB Brasil last year. But despite the Latin American nation’s strong showing, Diehl points out that only one of the country’s haul of gold Lions was for film. “I think over the past year the industry in Brazil has been improving, but still, this year at Cannes there was only one Lion in film for Brazil. I think it’s time for people here to rethink their aspirations for next year, so things can change.” Whether that change can materialise, Diehl at least will be leading the charge from behind the camera.