Belonging to the recent generation of Brazilian filmmakers from Pernambuco making waves on the international circuit, including Kleber Mendonça Filho, Marcelo Gomes and Cláudio Assis.

[12] His 2009's High-rise (Um Lugar ao Sol), was screened at over thirty film festivals, including BAFICI[13] and Visions du Réel.

The film uses interviews with these residents to fuel a debate on desire, visibility, insecurity, status and power, and to develop a sensorial discourse on Brazilian social and architectural paradigms.

The film debuted on the Bright Future program at the Rotterdam Festival, which also awarded him a script-development grant for Neon Bull (2015) through the Hubert Bals Fund.

[23] In 2013, Mascaro launched the short-film Ebb and Flow (A onda traz, o vento leva) (2012), a documentary that portrays the everyday life of Rodrigo, a deaf man whose job is to instal sound systems in cars.

[28] The film accompanies Shirley, who leaves the big city for the quiet life in a small seaside town in order to look after her sick grandmother.

In April 2016, the curator Dennis Lim organised a retrospective at the Lincoln Center (New York) entitled “Ebbs and Flows”,[41] featuring all of Mascaro's feature-length work since High-Rise.

[43][44] In 2025, Mascaro's The Blue Trail was selected for the Main Competition of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, where it had its world premiere on 16 February 2025, and won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize.