Rafael Lessa is a writer, director, and creative consultant with over 15 years of experience working with players including Amazon, Netflix, and Gaumont. He is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the organization behind the Emmy Awards. His work has been honored at the Berlin, Locarno, and Venice film festivals. He transitions between commercially successful television projects and artistically relevant films on the international stage.

His feature film as a screenwriter Regra 34 (Rule 34) won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the Locarno Film Festival in 2022. Rafael was the head writer and co-executive producer for season one of the show Lov3, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video and won the Brazilian Writers’ Association award for best comedy series. He wrote seasons one and two of Samantha!, a Netflix original series. Most recently, Rafael served as head writer on the series Brazilian Cowboys for Globo. His latest feature as a screenwriter, That’s Not Cheating, was released in 2025 by Disney LATAM Productions.

Rafael teaches screenwriting at Columbia University’s M.F.A. Film Program and at the Dramatic Writing and Collaborative Arts departments at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University’s Film School and a joint M.B.A. in the Business of Entertainment from the University of Southern California’s Business and Cinematic Arts schools. Rafael is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is represented by Zero Gravity Management in the United States and F.R. Productions in Brazil. He is a member of the Brazilian Filmmakers Collective since 2023.