 He worked as copy editor at the magazine Visão between 1954 and 1957, and after that he went to France to study film direction at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques.Back to Brazil in 1960, Coutinho collaborated with the Centro Popular de Cultura - CPC (Popular Center of Culture), an intellectual group associated to the Brazilian National Student Union, where he produced the 1962 film Cinco Vezes Favela.Chosen to direct CPC's next production, Coutinho started to work in a fiction based on the death of João Pedro Teixeira, a peasant leader of the Ligas Camponesas in Pernambuco, titled "Cabra marcado para morrer".