Flavio Alves

Flavio Alves is a Brazilian-American gay filmmaker who fled Brazil and was granted U.S. political asylum in 1998 on the basis of his sexual orientation, after publishing Toque de Silêncio (1997), a book on the history of gay and lesbian service members in the Brazilian military. After working in New York politics and studying film at NYU, Alves directed a string of acclaimed short films, including "Even in My Dreams" (2008) and "The Secret Friend" (2010), before making his feature debut with The Garden Left Behind (2020), a deeply humane film about a Mexican transgender woman and her grandmother navigating life as undocumented immigrants in New York City. The film, starring trans actress Carlie Guevara in the lead role, cast transgender performers in all of its transgender roles and won the Audience Award at SXSW, later earning Alves the Best Latinx Director Award from the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. Alves has spoken about the importance of telling stories about trans immigrants — a population rarely seen in American independent film — and about the intersection of trans rights and immigration justice.