opinion
TAKING A STAND
Fernando Grostein Andrade writes about his new documentary “Breaking Myths,” which challenges Bolsonaro’s anti-LGBTQ+ hate through Andrade’s own experiences with homophobia.
Fernando Grostein Andrade, 41, wrote, directed and produced the 2019 film Abe (featured at Sundance 19), an allegory to the Middle Eastern conflict told through the eyes of a New York teenager who hopes to unite his half-Israeli, half-Palestinian family, starring Stranger Things’ star Noah Schnapp and Seu Jorge.
Andrade first made waves around the world 13 years ago with his documentary Breaking the Taboo, a film that explored alternative solutions to the war on drugs, approaching it as a healthcare issue. The doc, which featured interviews with heads of state like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was distributed in 22 countries, and eventually turned into a 20-part Brazilian TV series. Richard Branson optioned it for an English-version (Breaking Taboo), narrated by Morgan Freeman. The movement’s online media channel ended up becoming the largest human rights internet outlet in Brazil, with over 21 million followers on social media platforms.
Andrade’s journey promoting human rights started in the early days of his career. He co-founded a theater group inside a maximum-security penitentiary. The inmates from the program later became actors on a feature film and on several TV series in Brazil. He also directed the 2019 documentary Jailors, which revealed the lives of penitentiary agents in eight penitentiaries in São Paulo.
But as he watched far-right politics grow ever more popular in his home country, led by the rise of the outwardly homophobic Jair Bolsonaro, he knew it was time to get more personal with his art. Growing up the son of the editor of the Brazilian-edition of Playboy, Andrade realized at a young age that those images meant something else for him because he had no attraction to women. And, so, when his beloved Brazil was becoming the type of place where football fans openly chanted “death to f****ts” in the stadiums, he publicly came out to his hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube.
The video resonated with so many Brazilians around the country, who felt inspired to do the same and come out to their own conservative families. But after Andrade began getting death threats from Bolsonaro supporters, he relocated to Los Angeles, and began work on Breaking Myths.