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Amir Labaki is the founder and director of It’s All True – International Documentary Film Festival, the primary and longest-running event dedicated exclusively to documentary cinema in Latin America, which holds its 31st edition in 2026.
Born in São Paulo (1963) and a Film graduate from ECA-USP (1984), he directed the São Paulo Museum of Image and Sound (MIS-SP) for two terms (1993-1995, 2003-2005). From 2003 to 2012, he was a board member of IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
Since 2002, Labaki has written the weekly column “It’s All True” about documentaries and cinema in Valor Econômico. He is also a columnist for Folha de S. Paulo, where he was an editorialist (1985-1987), film critic, and cultural correspondent in New York (1998-1999).
Labaki is the author of 13 books on history and cinema, including “1961 - A Crise da Renúncia e a Solução Parlamentarista” (Brasiliense, 1986), “O Cinema dos Anos 80” (Brasiliense, 1992), “Solanas por Solanas” (Iluminuras, 1993), “O Cinema Urgente de Santiago Alvarez” (Iluminuras, 1994), “Folha Conta Cem Anos de Cinema” (Imago, 1995), “O Cinema Brasileiro” (Publifolha, 1998), “Folha Explica 2001 – Uma Odisséia no Espaço” (Publifolha, 2001), “Person por Person” (É Tudo Verdade, 2003), “É Tudo Verdade – Reflexões sobre a Cultura do Documentário” (Francis, 2005), “Introdução ao Documentário Brasileiro” (Francis, 2006), “É Tudo Cinema – 15 anos de É Tudo Verdade” (Imprensa Oficial, 2010), and “A Verdade de Cada Um” (Cosac Naify, 2015).
Since 2004, Labaki has been the director, writer, and host of the program It’s All True on Canal Brasil, the most important and longest-running television program dedicated to Brazilian documentaries. For the same channel, he produced, directed, and hosted the series “Cineastas do Real” (2015). From 2010 to 2013, he was the international curator and host of the program “Cultura Documentários” on TV Cultura – São Paulo.
His most recent work as a director is the documentary series “1961” (2025), produced in partnership with Canal Brasil. Inspired by his book of the same name, the work examines the behind-the-scenes of the political crisis triggered by Jânio Quadros‘ resignation and the resistance to João Goulart‘s inauguration, revisiting the Legality Campaign and the adoption of the parliamentary regime through interviews and archival material.
As a director, Labaki also directed, in 2005, for the series “Retratos Brasileiros” on Canal Brasil, the short documentary “Um Intelectual no Cinema,” about filmmaker, editor, and essayist Eduardo Escorel. His first feature film, “27 Scenes about Jorgen Leth” (2009), was selected for festivals such as CPH:DOX (Denmark), Docudays (Lebanon), Jihlava (Czech Republic), DocLisboa (Portugal), Havana Film Festival (Cuba), Festival do Rio, and the São Paulo International Film Festival.
In theater, he wrote the play “Lenya” (2006), about singer and actress Lotte Lenya, staged at Sesc – SP in 2008, starring Mônica Guimarães and directed by Regina Galdino. In 2014, he was co-producer and co-translator of the Brazilian premiere of “After the Rehearsal” by Ingmar Bergman, directed by Mônica Guimarães. In 2020, he directed the play “Anna & Isaiah,” with Mônica Guimarães and Leopoldo Pacheco, for the Teatro na Mário cycle at the Mário de Andrade Library.
Labaki has participated in juries at more than 30 national and international film festivals, such as Sundance (Latin American jury, USA), IDFA (Netherlands), Moscow (documentary jury), Dok-Leipzig and Oberhausen (Germany), CPH:DOX, Hot Docs and RIDM-Montreal (Canada), FID-Marseille (France), Tampere and Helsinki (Finland), Festival dei Popoli (Florence), Tempo (Sweden), Human Rights Festival (Prague), and Jihlava (Czech Republic), Lisbon, Porto and Vila do Conde (Portugal), Valdívia (Chile), as well as Brazilian festivals such as Brasília, Gramado, Recife, Festival do Rio, and the São Paulo International Film Festival.