Rio Film Festival: Elections, Oscar Hopes and a Homegrown Wave

The Rio Film Festival ran Oct. 1-11 under the shadow of the closest Brazilian presidential race in decades, and the industry gathering around it did not look away. The festival's first weekend coincided with the first round of voting, in which President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva lost to far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro by less than 2%.

Two days after that result, Variety reported that Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura, Fernando Meirelles and Petra Costa signed an open letter calling international attention to the second round on Oct. 25. Despite the tension, filmmakers repeatedly declared support for Lula from the festival stage. "Club Kid" director Jordan Firstman raised his hand in an "L" sign while introducing the closing film at the Odeon on Saturday night.

What did the festival screen?

The edition opened and closed with buzzy queer films: Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's "La Bola Negra" and Jordan Firstman's "Club Kid." The program introduced a strong crop of new Brazilian cinema:

• Gabriel Martins's Toronto-selected "On Behalf of My Son"
• Allan Deberton's Oscar hopeful "Gugu's World"
• Enock Carvalho and Mateus Farias's Locarno-winning "The Riverbank"
• "London" by Victor di Marco and Márcio Picoli, winner of the Venice Queer Lion

Why do screens matter for audience development?

At RioMarket, the festival's industry sidebar, executives and producers repeatedly flagged audience development as Brazil's core challenge. In an in-conversation event with director Marcelo Gomes and actor Rodrigo Santoro, festival director Ilda Santiago raised the issue of the country's screen count.

Brazil has 3,538 screens, with 43% concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo — for a population of over 214 million. The U.S. holds 35,000 to 40,000 commercial screens for 349 million people; France has 6,355 for 69 million.

How strong is the co-production push?

Following two banner years with Walter Salles's "I'm Still Here" and Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent," Brazil made a splash internationally with co-productions including Abinash Bikram Shah's "Elephants in the Fog," Marcelo Martinessi's "Narciso," Benjamin Naishtat's "Glaxo," Marco Becchis's "Back to Buenos Aires," Dominga Sotomayor's "La Perra" and Bruno Santamaría Razo's "Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building."

That momentum carried into Rio. MyMama Entertainment announced it is producing Locarno-winner Andrea Štaka's "Ibicaba: O Paraíso Prometido," starring Ella Rumpf and Júlio Andrade. Bubbles Project is preparing "I Love You, and Today Everything Looks Beautiful" from "Puan" helmer Maria Alché. Producers stressed the need for global partners and alternative financing, particularly given political instability that could shrink Brazil's public funds.

Are domestic audiences the priority?

Yes, emphatically. Gustavo Mello, partner at Boutique Filmes, told Variety that since the success of the Netflix series "3%," Brazil has remained the company's top priority. "We need to produce for Brazil, and it needs to remain our focus," Mello said. "When we do this well, our work travels."

Santiago echoed that in her programming of Premiere Brasil, which has expanded into several subcategories. "Brazilian cinema isn't one singular thing," she told Variety. "Our cinema is plural. I don't want audiences to say they are going to the cinema to watch a Brazilian film; I want them to seek genre films, dramas, coming-of-agers, which just so happen to be Brazilian."

Young audiences proved the point, lining up outside venues while scrolling Letterboxd — not only for major hits but for obscure festival titles and RioMarket sessions, including a panel on women in cinema held with the European Film Promotion.

What about genre and Spain?

Pablo Guisa Koestinger, founder of Mórbido Film Fest and executive director of the Fantastic Pavilion at the Marché du Film, launched Fantastic: Brasil at the festival, a new genre-cinema platform backed by partners including Sitges and Festival do Rio, with three calls for emerging Latin American genre voices. Standout Brazilian genre titles included Maju de Paiva and Bernardo Florim's "Diário do Fogo," Ricardo Alves Jr.'s "The French Teacher" and Gustavo Vinagre and Gurcius Gewdner's "Bowels of Hell."

Beyond horror, Tomás Portella's "Overman," adapted from Laerte's comic strips and starring Caco Ciocler, offered a Brazilian answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kátia Lund reunited with "City of God" star Jonathan Haagensen to co-direct "My First Girlfriend," and Carlos Saldanha ("Rio," "Ice Age") closed the festival with "100 Days," chronicling Amyr Klink's pioneering Atlantic crossing in a rowing boat.

Spain loomed large: veteran producer Esther García, Pedro Almodóvar's longtime collaborator, presided over the Premiere Brasil jury, and Spanish titles including Diego Luna's "Ashes" played in the program. "Today, I see young people in Brazil actively trying to learn Spanish, which is something I didn't see 10 years ago," Santiago said. "There's this latent desire from a new Brazilian generation to be connected with their Latin heritage and cultural identity."

Are the Oscars within reach?

Real-life stories drew some of the longest queues in Botafogo, including Pedro Waddington's "Fernanda," about "Central Station" actress Fernanda Montenegro, Prime Video's "Marília Mendonça – Um Sentimento Louco," Eryk Rocha's "Elza" and "Alucinação" by Renato Terra, Marcos Caetano and Leo Caetano.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sent two representatives to RioMarket: Michael Benedict, director of member relations and awards administration, and Taylor Morales, associate director of the film archive. Benedict noted the Academy's "increased" focus on "global cinema" after explaining how to submit films to the Oscars. Last year, Academy CEO Bill Kramer, attending Rio for the first time, called the furore over Salles's film "historic" and said it was "incredible to watch videos of people stopping their Carnival celebrations to watch the awards." With Deberton's "Gugu's World" in the race, that bond — and Brazil's Oscar ambitions — now rest on how the second round of elections reshapes the country's film funding.