Sugar Dead I

Directed by Flávio Carnielli

A naive girl falls into the trap of the ambitious owner of a sugar babies agency, who carries out a macabre plot to increase her profits.

Country: Brazil

Writer(s): Flávio Carnielli

Producer(s): Flávio Carnielli

Composer(s): Guga Lourenço

Cast: Lolla Tavares - Samantha, Marcos Zuin - Charles Dummont, Natália Mariotto - Lavínia, Amanda Moreira - Donatella Ramos, Sílvio Fullin - Stênio, Victória Oliveira - Baby ((on Sugar Rush advertisement), Wagner Kampynas - Daddy (on Sugar Rush advertisement), Beto De Vuono (voice)

Genres: Horror, Comedy

Aspect Ratio: 16:9

Original Release Date: 2021-07-01

Sales Pitch: Even in death, they’re still “daddy.” Sugar Dead is a cult Brazilian horror-comedy short film that cleverly and grossly explores the concept of sugar relationships. It’s a brilliant piece for lovers of bad-taste cinema.

IMDb URL: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15134064/

TMDB URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/913031-sugar-dead

Festivals Won: Best Horror Film - Curta Canedo, Best Makeup - Festival Monstro Jacareí

Flávio Carnielli

Flávio Carnielli is a filmmaker and holds a Master’s degree in Cultural History, but above all he is a filmmaker from the Brazilian countryside, proudly rooted in its culture, whether in family films or gore horror. Since 2009, he has written and directed twenty films, including documentaries and fiction, both short and feature-length.

Flávio believes in artistic freedom in a country where it is not always welcomed. For this reason, he moves between family-oriented projects such as the feature film As Beauty as Love (2025), available on Looke and Amazon Prime, and more unconventional works such as the feature Savage Formula (2021), the Brazilian Cannonball Run, which premiered at the BAFICI festival in Buenos Aires.

In short films, he has explored several horror subgenres such as the gore film The Doll (2019), a finalist at the BUT Film Festival, the horror-comedy series Sugar Dead (2021 and 2025), and Rotten Faith (2020), considered a small masterpiece of Brazilian horror, screened at Kinoforum and Itaú Cultural and winner of more than twenty technical awards at national and international festivals.