Débora Backes Barboza is a screenwriter and writer from Porto Alegre, Brazil, based in Berlin since 2015. She studied journalism at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) and holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Analysis and Media from the Heinrich-Heine-Universtität Dusseldorf. After working as a journalist and writing for Brazilian and German media such as Folha de São Paulo, Galileu and Die Zeit, in 2021 she began studying screenwriting at filmArche Berlin and has already been involved in the production of short films as a screenwriter, producer and assistant director. In 2023 her script Inferno was a semi-finalist at the Vancouver Horror Show Film Festival. That same year she participated in the 4th Short Screenplay Lab at the Instituto Cervantes in Berlin to develop a short film, where she received advice from screenwriter María Meira. From September to December 2023, Débora took part in a three-month residency at the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños in Cuba (EICTV) to develop her first feature film — O Cheiro da Árvore (The Smell of the Tree).

O Cheiro da Árvore (The Smell of the Tree) — After the mysterious death of her husband, a woman has to continue working on a tobacco plantation in southern Brazil. As she sinks deeper and deeper into the tasks that once belonged to her husband, she begins to feel in her body symptoms of what could have killed him.