Grazi Massafera To Star In José Eduardo Belmonte’s Movie About Brazilian Activist Fernanda Giannasi

EXCLUSIVE: International Emmy-nominated Brazilian actress Grazi Massafera will play Fernanda Giannasi in José Eduardo Belmonte’s upcoming film about the Brazilian activist. Giannasi has been dubbed the “Brazilian Erin Brockovich” for her courageous fight for the rights of workers, leading a movement that helped lead to asbestos being banned in the country.

The movie’s working title is Uma Mulher em Combate and the English-language working title is A Woman Against The Machine.

Belmonte gave Deadline the lowdown on the project. “It follows an engineer who enters public service under the lingering shadow of Brazil’s dictatorship, almost by chance, almost against her will,” he explained. “When she discovers that asbestos kills the body slowly and silently corrodes it, she chooses not to look away. And that decision changes everything.”

Work on the script is underway and the movie is expected to deliver in 2027. Before that, Massafera and Belmonte will join forces on another project, the horror movie Mensagens Encontradas (Found Messages). “Everything begins with a cellphone found after the mysterious disappearance of its owner,” Belmonte explained. “The film is built exclusively from what remains inside that device: broken images, fragments of voices, nervous silences, trivial recordings that slowly turn unsettling.”

Massafera came to public attention in Brazil after winning the country’s version of Big Brother, going on to star in numerous TV shows locally and scoring and i-Emmy nom for her role in Verdades Secretas (Hidden Truths/Secrets). The pair of upcoming projects are the latest collaborations between her and the director. “The first time I worked with Belmonte was on Billy Pig. And recently we repeated the partnership on Uma Família Feliz,” Massafera said. “Since our last work, we’ve been talking about new projects.”