Through the Years
"I never asked for permission to make a film. I just made it."
Lucas Estevan Soares was born in 1990 in Boqueirão, one of the largest and most working-class neighborhoods in Curitiba, Brazil. At 16 he discovered theater and spent the next two years commuting ninety minutes each way across the city to rehearse. At 18 he moved to Rio de Janeiro to study filmmaking. By 19, with a camera his father gave him as a gift, he had already directed his first films.
From 2009 onward, Lucas traveled to 27 countries across 5 continents, always carrying a single camera and no production budget. He funded his travels by working along the way, sleeping on couches, accepting whatever opportunity appeared next. The films he made in each place cost almost nothing to produce: no crew, no permits, no equipment rentals. Just him, the camera, and whoever was willing to be in front of it. He called it "run-and-gun filmmaking."
In October 2012, Lucas founded IHC (International House of Cinema) in Curitiba. What started as a one-man operation evolved over the years into a creative venture studio that produces films, music, branded entertainment, and technology.
Rhaissa Gonçalves joined as producer in 2014 and became co-founder the following year. Together they built a way of working where nothing leaves the house unfinished. Script, direction, production, soundtrack, color grading, distribution, marketing. Everything under one roof. In 2018, Lucas and Rhaissa opened a second headquarters in Miami.
In 2019, Lucas took the biggest risk of his career. Without sponsors, without tax incentives, without any public funding, he directed his first feature film entirely with IHC's own money. "Coração de Neon" tells the story of Fernando, a young man who delivers romantic messages aboard a singing telegram car in the streets of Boqueirão.
The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, where it was called "a great example of the new Brazilian popular cinema." It went on to screen in over 150 theaters across Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and became the first Brazilian film mixed in Dolby Atmos 9.1. Awards followed in Houston, Moscow, and Brazil.
Today Lucas works across film, music, technology, and new ventures. He is currently producing "Diary of a Guerrilla Filmmaker", a documentary series that revisits his own past through restored images, cinema, and experimentation. Not a memoir. An investigation into who he became while trying to become someone.
He composes music. He builds software. He writes. He raises his son Antoni Sol. He walks his Golden Retrievers. And he keeps making films the same way he always has: on his own terms.