Full-length feature film: The Curious Tales of Italo Ferreira!

The story of the ultra-vibrant Ferreira, who enjoys dressing in zoo-animal prints, is an  old and hackneyed one: but in Italo’s case it’s true.

The fifty-minute film, The Curious Tales of Italo Ferreira, draws on decades of friendships and shared histories of the reigning, at least for a few more days, world champion surfer from Baia Fermosa in northern Brazil.

The story of the ultra-vibrant Ferreira, who is twenty-seven, and who enjoys dressing in zoo-animal prints that are the hallmark of ebullient resort wear, is an old and hackneyed one: but in Italo’s case it’s true. The key to the pro surfing kingdom wasn’t presented to him on an upholstered velvet cushion via a dad that surfed, a benevolent sponsor and a training program where men stand on the beach under an umbrella filming the children for later review of technique.

Italo grew up in a fishing town in north-east Brazil, population eight thousand, called Baia Formosa; a joint where the only paved roads are the ones that lead into the village.

Italo’s pops would wander the beach and buy the catch of local fisherman and make his profit, a slender one but enough to feed his family, selling fish to restaurants.

His skinny son wanted to surf so Pops gave him the foam lid from the box he kept his fish in.

Eight-year-old Italo was so small it just worked on Baia’s little righthander.

Then, and in short order, an older friend who saw the boy’s love of surfing gifted him a fibreglass surfboard, he won the first contest he entered, moved onto regional events and then national, trying to win “cars, motorbikes and tickets to fly overseas.”

And so on.

Watch here.