His play Orfeu da Conceição, a reworking of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the carnival in Rio, was itself adapted into the film Black Orpheus, which won an Academy Award in 1959 as the Best Foreign Language Film (France; director, Marcel Camus).
His songs Para Uma Menina com Uma Flor and Samba da Bênção (music by Baden Powell) were included on the soundtrack of A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme, Claude Lelouch, 1966), another Cannes film festival winner.