Jefferson Sousa (Northeastern Brazil Culture)

Journalist and filmmaker, Jefferson Sousa (27) was born in Itapetim, a city in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. In journalism, he won the Cristina Tavares Prize for Literary Journalism in 2018 and was shortlisted for the colombian Gabriel García Márquez Journalism Prize. In cinema, in 2017, Jefferson made his first independent short, "Poetas Illiterados do Sertão do Pajeú", which has already surpassed 1,800,000 views on Youtube. In 2019, he made his second short documentary, entitled "Leonardo Bastião, the illiterate poet", which was shown at festivals in 11 countries and won more than 10 national and international awards, yielding stories in newspapers such as the BBC and Globo News. He is currently in the distribution phase of his third documentary short, "Pedro Tenório de Lima and the hoe of an illiterate poet".