Uruguayan filmmaker based in Berlin since 2009 — brought by the DAAD Berlin Artists Programme. Three features, a TV series, documentary work, and ten short films — distributed by HBO, screened at Busan, Shanghai, and across four continents. Professor of Screenwriting and Directing, SRH University Berlin.
Tito, 13, lives in a fictional town in rural Uruguay. When a Brazilian scout spots him, the family seizes the chance — and the boy disappears into a machine that turns talent into money. A coming-of-age film about working-class aspiration, the exploitation of gifted children, and the long education of a neglectful father. Based on the novel by Daniel Baldi.
HBO Americas Distribution #1 Box Office · Uruguay Busan IFF Competition Ibermedia
At the antipodes of the usual soft family comedies that approach sport, Morelli takes his film through the cobbled paths of social and moral drama.
One of the most serious attempts by Uruguayan cinema at an industrial model: a classical narrative with dynamic, wit, and conviction.
The balance between pop cinema and a story with depth doesn't always work. In this Uruguayan film, it does. A small goal from midfield.
The tone is right, free of gravity. The story moves fast on and off the pitch — a few shots are enough to resolve complex action.
I was bored to death by Hollywood films costing $200 million — here I was entertained throughout and at times moved. Made with heart.
Home Team shows a boy's rise and fall with authenticity. A classic theme about overcoming obstacles and finding the meaning of life in love of family.
A birthday party goes wrong when a child is not picked up by his parents. Matthias — chronically absent, professionally distracted — finds himself navigating the rain-soaked streets of Halle in search of the boy's family. A kafkaesque odyssey that becomes a journey into his own failure as a father. Structured in three chapters: Menschen, Katzen, Elefanten.
ZDF · Das Kleine Fernsehspiel FBW Besonders Wertvoll German Cinema Release
An unusual work that sets itself apart from conventional family drama. What makes Morelli's approach so compelling is the level of abstraction with which he tackles the material.
Morelli crosses family drama with film noir — wonderful black-and-white photography and a mournful jazz trumpet. As mad as it may sound: it works.
He stages the domestic conflict not as a grey-toned social drama but as film noir, in razor-sharp, polished images that explore the full richness of black and white contrast.
A furious, almost kafkaesque odyssey through a night full of adventure, strangeness, and absurd turns — where the borders between tragedy and black-humoured surrealism dissolve.
Der Geburtstag is a small masterpiece — a fascinating journey not only through old Halle and a children's birthday party, but into the depths of a battered and then reborn soul.
An aesthetically interesting film. The combination of black-and-white cinematography and cool jazz creates an atmosphere in which the characters' actions read as metaphor.
Theater Thikwa — Berlin's award-winning inclusive theater, where artists with and without disabilities perform together — makes its first journey to Uruguay. The film follows the company across borders, tracking what bodies carry when they travel: artistic risk, collective memory, and the particular displacement of artists who belong everywhere and nowhere. Co-directed with Andrés Varela. DoP: César Charlone.
Premio FONA 2024 Le FIFA Montréal 2026 Goethe-Institut · ACAU
Eight stories set in the same Montevideo Airbnb apartment — each episode a different writer, a different genre, a different world. Morelli contributed as writer and director on two episodes. Produced at Teatro El Galpón, Uruguay's most celebrated theater, whose stage was converted into a full TV set. Created by Esther Feldman (Okupas, En Terapia), with artistic coordination by José Miguel Onaindia and general direction by Guillermo Casanova.
Canal 10 Uruguay Premio Montevideo Audiovisual
Sent to Madrid to live with the mother who left her, a fifteen-year-old footballer fights to get sent home — never seeing that winning that fight means losing her mother for good.
When a corporate franchise opens across the road, a stubborn tire-fitter refuses to trade his dignity for a paycheck — and that refusal is the one thing that costs him everything.
Two women pass as sisters to protect a love the state calls a crime — until an auditor’s arrival makes survival itself demand they become what the town has always feared.
To keep her son, an undocumented mother takes a night job watching the dead — who stay still only as long as she keeps working.
A grieving detective blames an AI for her husband’s death — then has to trust that same machine to stop a catastrophe no human can.
The short films are the laboratory. From Alguien debe morir (2002) to Dile que quiero verlo (2014), a constant: characters trapped in situations that force them to reveal something they would rather not know about themselves. Comedy and drama don't alternate — they coexist in the same shot. The tone shifts; the mechanism is always the same. Screened at Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Tampere, Clermont-Ferrand, Hamburg, and over forty international festivals.
Carlos Morelli came to cinema sideways. First he was a violinist — trained at the Simón Bolívar conservatory in Venezuela, first violin in youth orchestras across Uruguay and Argentina. In 1999, a screenwriting course changed the direction entirely. What didn't change was the way he listens: for rhythm, for the weight of silence, for what happens in the space between two moments. He completed a BA in Audiovisual Production at Universidad ORT Uruguay, then a Master's in Feature Film Screenwriting at ESCAC in Barcelona (2004).
His early short films moved immediately. Alguien debe morir (2002) screened in Official Competition at Rotterdam. Breve historia de cómo se conocieron... took multiple first prizes at Rotterdam, Leeds, and Tampere — and began a consistent pattern: comedies that open onto something more uncomfortable, dramas with a lightness that keeps them from collapse. In 2004, the Berlinale Talent Campus. In 2005, Artist-in-Residence at the Modern Art Museum of Shanghai.
From 2005 to 2009 he taught dramaturgy at the University of Guadalajara. In 2008, the DAAD Berlin Artists Programme brought him to Germany — and he stayed. The short film Warisover, made during that residency, won the ARTE Short Film Award at Filmfest Hamburg 2011.
Mi Mundial (2017) was his feature debut — the highest-grossing Uruguayan film in cinema history. Der Geburtstag (2019) followed: a black-and-white film noir made for ZDF. Bauchgefühl (2024), a documentary co-directed with Andrés Varela, is his third feature. Full details, press, and trailers are in the filmography above.
He has worked as writer-director on two episodes of Temporario (Canal 10 Uruguay, created by Esther Feldman). Six projects are currently in active development with financing from Uruguay, Germany, and the UK. He teaches Screenwriting and Directing at SRH University Berlin and at the DFFB — and has taught across Spain, Mexico, Chile, China, and Uruguay.
Working with Actors · SRH BerlinMorelli teaches the way he directs — structure as rhythm, not architecture; the silence between two beats weighing as much as the beats. Feedback systematic, precise, never generic.
No concessions on structure, no impatience with process. He works with equal fluency in two production cultures — Latin American and German-European — and brings both into the room.
M.A. Film, Television & Digital Narratives · B.A. Film & Motion Design — SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences. Story-development mentor for thesis films at the DFFB since 2022.
For film development, co-production inquiries, teaching invitations, and speaking engagements.