How did Young Guns get on your radar?

Our first contact with the festival goes way back. We remember seeing a few Brazilian creatives getting selected and thinking, even as interns, “Wow… maybe one day we’ll get to submit too.”

Every year since, we’ve followed the Young Guns announcements and always felt blown away by the level of talent. It was something that genuinely inspired us. So to find out we actually won this year? Honestly, it feels surreal and incredibly special.

How did you end up in the creative field?

Great question… Not sure it is the best answer, but honestly it was a happy sequence of accidents that brought us here.

As a duo, we had different paths, but they always crossed. We both studied Advertising — we were even in the same class for a while — and we were part of the same group of friends who used to skip class to grab a beer at the bar. Neither of us was particularly in love with advertising back then, nor did we have a clear desire to build a career in it.

We basically ended up there because we had a creative streak, and it felt like something still connected to the business world without being a one hundred percent crazy artist life.

Beto’s cousin had a small production company in São Paulo, so Beto started interning there with zero expectations. But he ended up loving it and began doing some small personal video projects. At some point he left to experience the other side of the industry and went to R/GA São Paulo to work with motion, editing and a bit of directing.

And that is exactly when Gabriel joined the same production company as an intern, taking Beto’s spot. Same story: Gabriel also fell in love with the field and never looked back. After working as an intern, Gabriel did many jobs as a creative researcher, second assistant director, editor, etc., and even directed a few spots as a solo director.

From there, we naturally started collaborating. Music videos, scripts, ideas, experiments… we were always creating something, long before the name PALADINO existed. After a few years working together informally, we decided to make it official. We came up with the name Paladino (the story behind the name is for another time), and launched our Instagram. We already had a connection with a production company interested in representing us, plus a few personal projects in our pocket — and that is how everything started.

We think the moment we fell in love with directing was the moment it stopped being an accident. From that moment on, we started really putting in the work to make our careers as directors happen. Growing, taking on challenging projects and being recognized became our dream. And we are really happy to be here.

Why did you decide to enter this year?

This was actually our first time entering. To be completely honest, up until not long ago we had not even considered submitting. But the last two years have been really special in our career.

We finally felt like we were expressing ourselves fully as directors — not only in commercial work, where we explore a more modern and pop-driven vision, but also in music videos, where we tap into something more dramatic, visceral and personal. That contrast ended up shaping a balance we are genuinely proud of.

It is also important to say that joining Iconoclast was a huge turning point for us. It opened doors that simply were not opening before. We could have entered next year as well, but getting recognized now feels amazing. It is a reminder that trusting the vision we always believed in was absolutely worth it.

“We have grown to love building peculiar worlds, with slightly odd characters… a kind of magic realism.”

You only get to submit six projects. How did you decide what made the cut?

It was definitely tough to choose which projects to submit, but in the end we focused on the ones that stayed truest to what we envisioned from the start — the films where our ideas actually made it to the final piece.

That is rare, but always special when it happens. In music videos this feels more natural, but in advertising it is a real challenge.

We have grown to love building peculiar worlds, with slightly odd characters and a style where production design and VFX work together in a way that gives us the freedom to step into a kind of magic realism. That is what makes the films more entertaining to us.

So our selection came from that place — showing the potential of this approach in both simpler pieces and in bigger productions.

What was your reaction when you found out you won?

It happened in a really funny moment. We were on set, fully focused, shooting a scene with an electronic robot, so we were completely locked in. The only thing we checked on our phones was the WhatsApp group with our EP at Iconoclast Brazil, because she would send us specific client feedback coming from video village.

Then suddenly, in one of those messages, she tells us we got an email saying we had won. It felt magical. We celebrated for maybe five minutes — literally between a lens swap haha — and then went straight back to shooting plates of the set so we could remove the tracks pulling the robot. So yes, we were pulled right back into the real world. And it was only day two of a five day shoot.

What made it even nicer was that many of the films in our submission were made with the same crew we were shooting with that day, so receiving their excitement and support in that moment felt really special too.

In what ways does where you are living right now inspire your creativity?

For anyone working outside the Europe and US hubs, things are naturally more challenging. Most of what we consume comes from those centers, and the truth is that it is hard to have the same conditions to create work that reaches global recognition for its craft.

At the same time, we know Brazil has some of the best crews anywhere. That contrast ends up pushing everyone here to stretch each project as far as possible. This drive to elevate things becomes a creative exercise in itself, and a very rich one.

And Brazil, like many Latin countries, becomes even more interesting when we stop trying to replicate what comes from outside. We start to see how much talent, culture and unique context we actually have, and how strongly that resonates when we lean into it. Letting go of that inherited colonial lens is creatively freeing. It makes us want to bring more of our own richness into everything we make.

Now that you’re part of the Young Guns community, are there any past winners you admire?

We admire so many YG winners, but we wanted to give special props to the Brazilians we look up to on that list, people whose craft and authenticity have always inspired us: Mah Ferraz, Giordano Maestrelli, Douglas Bernardt.

And since the days we were buried in edit bays pulling references, there are a few names we’ve always watched with huge admiration and respect: Maceo Frost, Calmatic, Jonas Lindstroem, Niclas Larsson, Rubberband, Illimitéworld, Zhang & Knight, Sinan Sevinç, Felix Brady, Angelo Cerisara.

Name a creative/professional dream project that you have yet to fulfill.

Right now, our biggest dream is to collaborate on a music video with international artists we truly admire — people who could help bring our work to a global audience. Someone like Skrillex, The Chemical Brothers, Radiohead, Alt-J, A$AP Rocky, Kamasi Washington, Michael Kiwanuka, Flying Lotus, LCD Soundsystem… artists of that caliber who could give us the chance to create a music video that reaches a wide audience with our vision.