Gustavo Dahl (1938-2011), known mainly for his managerial work at the two major Brazilian film institutions: Embrafilme (1975-1979) and Ancine (2002- 2006), began his career as a film critic in newspapers and then became a filmmaker. This work focuses on the early years of this trajectory when the then young student, invited by Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes, publishes the first article for the Literary Supplement of the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo (1958 -1961) and extends for the period of film studies in Europe (1960-1964). As a method, the analysis of articles and correspondence of the European period is favored, when Dahl had as interlocutors Paulo Emílio, Glauber Rocha, Paulo César Saraceni and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. In the analysis of the articles, we observed the process of approaching the young São Paulo critic with the Young bossa novissimos, as Glauber Rocha used to name the group of directors whose first films gave rise to the movement. In the analysis of the letters it was possible to have a broader understanding of the relationship among Dahl and the young directors in order to emphasize the different phases of this process of approximation, from initial mistrust to deep complicity in the defense of the new Brazilian cinema. Through this intersection, it was possible to apprehend Dahl s strategic performance at the origin of Cinema Novo. At stake was the desire for the modernization of Brazilian cinema and its insertion in the artistic avant-garde of the 1960s, in consonance with the young cinemas of the period: the French nouvelle vague, the American independent cinema and the Cuban revolutionary cinema.