Flavio Pimenta Alves is a Brazilian writer, screenwriter, and film director resident in America since 1998. His movies consistently feature elderly characters as protagonists. He is best known for the film The Garden Left Behind starring Michael Madsen, Ed Asner and Carlie Guevara.

The Garden Left Behind is a 2019 drama film directed by Flavio Alves, and starring Michael Madsen, Ed Asner and Carlie Guevara. The story centers around the life of Tina Carrera, a Mexican trans woman, struggling to make a life for herself as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. The film premiered at SXSW in 2019, where it won the Audience Award. The Garden Left Behind became the first independent film to be funded substantially through donations and sales via eBay.