Gabriel Novis: Between Cinema, Memory, and the Poetics of Image

Gabriel Novis

Born in Maceió, Alagoas, director Gabriel Novis has become one of the most striking creative voices of his generation. His trajectory crosses commercial cinema, documentary, and fine-crafted branded narratives — always grounded in a language that is at once cinematic, intimate, and deeply human.

What makes Novis remarkable is not only the international recognition he has gathered, but the way his work carries the textures of place and memory, turning stories into images that feel tactile, timeless, and profoundly personal.

Dear Stranger. — A Manifesto in Motion

In 2025, Novis launched his own production company, Dear Stranger., a collective dedicated to cinematic storytelling with emotional depth.

The company’s statement reads like a poetic manifesto: “We whisper, invite, and occasionally confront… Our films and images feel like notes from a dream… We film what can’t be said.”

Working between São Paulo, Rio, and coastal Brazil, Dear Stranger. is already responsible for visually daring projects for Adidas, Oakley, Zara, and Jean Paul Gaultier. Yet what truly defines this platform is its insistence on translating the unspeakable — the fleeting gestures, silences, and fragments of intimacy — into moving images that resonate globally.

Alice — A Portrait of Resilience

At the heart of Novis’s practice is Alice, a short documentary that premiered at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto (2025) and was awarded Best International Short Documentary.

The film follows Alice Barbosa, a trans multi-artist and surfer, and childhood friend of the director. Through her story — marked by the loss of her father, the pain of exclusion, and the search for belonging — Novis builds a cinematic portrait that is both deeply personal and universally urgent.

The documentary exposes the prejudices still present in the surfing community while celebrating Alice’s resilience, transforming her return to the sea into an act of healing and reclamation.

“Alice is a powerful voice, raising an important debate for the surfing community… it was up to me to open the doors so she could tell her own story,” Novis has said.

Here, cinema functions as both mirror and vessel: a place where identity and landscape intertwine, where memory and image give form to resistance.

Watch His Work

Why Gabriel Novis Matters

Gabriel Novis is not merely a filmmaker; he is a translator of lived experience into visual poetry. From global campaigns to deeply personal stories, his work insists on cinema as a space of encounter — between strangers, between cultures, between memory and the present.

Through Dear Stranger. and films like Alice, Novis offers us not just images, but invitations: to reflect, to feel, to recognize the invisible ties that bind us.

Gabriel Novis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabriel.novis/