João Cândido Zacharias (Rio de Janeiro, 1981) is a director and screenwriter. His short film Sandra Calling (2017) won the Felix Award at the Rio Film Festival and was selected to festivals in Brazil, Europe and the US. His following short, The Last Romantics (2019), screened in over 35 film festivals around the globe. He has recently directed his first feature, the queer horror A Herança (Birthright).

His main focus of interest is genre cinema, ranging all scope from horror to thriller, action, crime and fantasy. As an LGBTQIAPN+ person, he is also very interested in portraying characters from that community and addressing, in cinematic and narrative ways, issues and themes regarding them.