About Inara C.
I am a Japanese-Brazilian documentary filmmaker based in the Netherlands who has been telling nonfiction stories for 12 years. I promote empathy and raise awareness of human rights and environmental issues through stories in which people are protagonists of their own narratives.
I am currently working on the feature-length documentary "Where is Nihon?", which was selected by Logan Nonfiction Program and was also a finalist at the Sundance Documentary Fund 2021 and the Berlinale Talents Doc Station 2022. My works include “Yzalú - Rap, Feminism and Blackness”, a CineB Solar winner and finalist at Semana Paulistana do Curta-Metragem (a City Hall of São Paulo’s competition); “Raam”, which won the CineSud’s SHIFT Film Festival Audience Award; and “Volta na Quadra,” winner of the NETLABTV Audience Award and sponsored by Folha de S. Paulo.
Through my production company, I created short documentaries, series, video reports and campaign videos for companies and organisations such as Greenpeace, Avaaz, Google, C&A Foundation, Folha de S. Paulo, GOL, Marie Claire, Revista AzMina, Equal Times, Storyhunter, among others. I also produced, filmed and directed the Brazilian stories for the Riot Games’ international documentary series “Legends Rising”, during two seasons. I started my career as a video journalist at Folha de S. Paulo, the largest Brazilian newspaper, and at the publishing companies Globo and Abril — being one of the talents of the training program “Abril Journalism Course”.
I received my degree in Social Communication and Journalism from the State University of Londrina in Brazil, studied documentary filmmaking at UnionDocs in New York, and have a specialized degree in cinema and video from Anhembi Morumbi University in Sao Paulo. Moreover I also did other courses focused on impact documentary, cinematography, editing, script writing and entrepreneurship.
