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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brazil Comes Strong to Cannes to Bank on ‘I'm Still Here' Oscar Momentum: ‘A Defining Moment For Brazilian Production'
There is momentum, and there is the current moment of Brazilian cinema. This year, Walter Salles' 'I'm Still Here' made history as the first-ever Brazilian film by a Brazilian director to win an Oscar, scoring Best International Feature and bringing the country its first best picture nomination as well as a best actress nomination for Fernanda Torres. The week before, Gabriel Mascaro won the prestigious Berlinale Silver Bear for 'The Blue Trail,' with the country having a chance at winning another major festival award with Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent' playing in main competition at Cannes, where Brazil is also the Country of Honor at the Marché du Film. 'Brazil stood out immediately with its cinematic heritage, a dynamic industry undergoing a strong resurgence, and a prominent presence in Cannes,' Marché du Film Executive Director Guillaume Esmiol tells Variety of choosing the Country of Honor. 'And, of course, Brazil brings an unmistakable festive spirit to the Croisette.' More from Variety Knowledgeable Producers and 'Unprecedented' Government Incentives Turn Brazil Into a Burgeoning Co-Production Power Kleber Mendonça Filho on Why 'The Secret Agent' Is His First 'Political' Film, Casting 'Classic Movie Star' Wagner Moura 'Enzo' Review: Robin Campillo Honors the Late Laurent Cantet With a Film That Embodies the Best of Both Directors Some of the initiatives connected to the celebrations at this year's Marché du Film include a selection of emerging Brazilian producers at the Producers Network; four Brazilian documentaries at Cannes Docs and new fiction projects in the Rio Film Festival Goes to Cannes showcase; plus masterclasses and training programmes. Brazil is the leading Latin American territory in the market, with the fastest regional growth in recent years. Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes, who will be in Cannes to attend the celebrations, highlights that one of the priorities since President Lula reinstated the Ministry of Culture — dismantled by former President Jair Bolsonaro — is 'a strategic vision of culture as an economic pillar that can generate jobs, income and market competitiveness.' 'Brazil is back in cinemas,' she continues. 'National productions took over 12 million people to cinemas in 2024, with five national films selling over 1 million tickets. The total gross from national titles reached $45 million, and cinemas earned over $442 million last year. Since the beginning of our term, we reinstated cultural policies that had been stopped or dismantled and are responsible for a historic investment in the sector.' A representative for Ancine, the country's National Film Agency, notes a significant strengthening of Brazil's internal market, with titles like 'I'm Still Here' elevating the market share of Brazilian films to 30% at the beginning of 2025. 'Ancine will continue to prioritize the production and international circulation of works that strengthen Brazil's image as a production hub,' they said. Over 2023-24, the Ministry of Culture invested over $742 million in Brazil's audiovisual industry through the country's primary public financing mechanism, the Audiovisual Sector Fund (ASF). The federal government also invested a further $495 million in the sector through the Paulo Gustavo Law, a historic post-pandemic recovery initiative that saw a historic one-time cash injection delivered to the country's 27 states and 5,000 cities to use in production and distribution incentives or the creation of a local knowledge economy. The Ministry of Culture also created 94 new screening rooms, taking the country to a record 3,509 screens nationwide, and reinstated the national quota in cinemas to 'ensure Brazilian films have a strong theatrical presence.' Other initiatives include Tela Brazil, a free streaming platform for Brazilian content, and plans to create a National Film Commission. Menezes also recently published an executive order extending fiscal incentives through the Audiovisual Law until 2029. 'We've been consolidating our independent audiovisual industry for the last 25 years,' says producer Fabiano Gullane, one of the founders of Gullane, the major production company behind 'Senna,' Netflix's first global series produced in Brazil. 'Today, not only are we a key consumer market to streamers — we are Netflix's second largest market in the world — but we are also protagonists in content production.' 'We have producers in all stages, who speak all languages, and are ready to take on any project,' adds Gullane. 'Brazil has a very mature market. It's not just about 'I'm Still Here,' it's about the work of 30 years. But this moment, of course, clearly enables international producers to see Brazil as a strategic partner. Today, we have resources, technology, and talent comparable to any country.' 'I'm Still Here' is the first original feature film produced by Globoplay, the streaming arm of media powerhouse Globo. Alex Medeiros, the director of drama, documentaries and films at Globoplay originals, says the success of 'a film in Portuguese, with a Brazilian story, is very meaningful to us.' 'An Oscar places a spotlight on new Brazilian productions, within the country and internationally. It's a defining moment for Brazilian audiovisual production.' Gustavo Gontijo, executive producer for development at O2 Filmes ('City of God'), similarly emphasizes the need for Brazilian producers to 'seize this great moment.' 'We have just come out of years under Bolsonaro in a government that unfortunately did not invest in our audiovisual industry and said we were not a priority. Thankfully, with Lula back in power, incentives and investments have returned, and we are already seeing the consequences.' 'In the next few years, we will see many projects being made in Brazil, thanks to the return of federal incentives, including projects by O2 Filmes.' The production company is currently working on big partnerships with streamers such as Fernando Meirelles's ambitious Amazon film 'Animal Race' and Netflix mini-series 'Pssica.' We made a strategic decision not to seek public funds under Bolsonaro, but we are now bidding again. We want to make cinema,' Gontijo says. 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Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brazilian Comeback: How The Cannes 2025 Country Of Honor Is Following The Success Of ‘I'm Still Here'
The scenes of celebration across Brazil in Carnival season when Walter Salles' I'm Still Here won the Best International Feature Film Oscar in March were akin to the country winning the World Cup. The excitement followed a post-pandemic record-breaking $35.6 million box office in Brazil for the drama starring Fernanda Torres as real-life figure Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared from their home in the early years of Brazil's 1964-85 military dictatorship. More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story Neon's Palme D'Or Whisperer Tom Quinn Reveals Keys To Cannes And Oscar Success: 'I'm Happy To Share A Playbook' As Tom Cruise Brings 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' To Cannes, All Five Franchise Directors Look Back At The Wild Ride 'That explosion of joy in the middle of the Carnival, which is the peak of our popular culture and the best of Brazil, the best of our collective capacity to actually say who we are, was extraordinary,' says Salles. The victory came hot on the heels of the Berlinale Grand Jury Prize win for Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist Gabriel Mascaro's The Blue Trail, a dystopian drama about a 77-year-old retiree's life-changing journey through the Amazon rainforest. Three months later, Brazil is out in force at the Cannes Film Festival with the selection of Kleber Mendonça Filho's political thriller The Secret Agent starring Mauro Wagner in the main competition. It is also the Country of Honor at the Cannes Marché du Film, with a delegation of film professionals expected on the Croisette, led by Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes, who also happens to be the queen of Brazilian Afropop. Elsewhere on the Croisette, Marianna Brennand, whose female-driven drama Manas earned the Director's Award in Venice's parallel section Giornate degli Autori in 2024, is being feted with the Women in Motion Emerging Talent Award. 'It's not just a coincidence, it's an astral connection,' jokes André Sturm, founder and president of promotional body Cinema Do Brasil, on the market honor. 'We were first offered the honor by the market two years ago… We didn't know about the Walter Salles movie. We couldn't have imagined the success,' he explains. The acceptance of the offer was spurred rather by left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's promise on his arrival in power in October 2022 to bolster the cultural sector. Aside from his ideological belief in the importance of culture, Lula also wants to make it a key part of the economy and job creation, particularly for younger generations. 'Audiovisual production is the strength of our cultural sector,' Menezes says. 'Despite political persecution and a lack of robust investment, the technical quality and talent of the sector's artistic community are undeniable.' Under this drive, $295 million has been earmarked for the film and TV sector to date. Lula's investment plans are astute. According to the national cinema agency Ancine, the audiovisual sector added $5 billion to GDP in 2023, and this figure is set to rise. The drive also makes Brazil an outlier in Latin America, where many other territories are slashing cultural budgets and censorship is on the rise. The most acute example is Argentina, where the far-right President Javier Milei has decimated the film sector. Brazil's cinema industry is recovering from its own brush with populism and authoritarianism under the 2019-2022 rule of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. During his time in power, which coincided with the pandemic, Bolsonaro disbanded the Ministry of Culture, cut cinema funding, and censored publicly funded projects. Menezes describes the federal government's $295 million investment as a 'rescue operation for the sector' following years of Bolsonaro's cuts. 'When we arrived, we found a wasteland of investments, a true chaos that was not easy to build,' the Minister says. Producer Tatiana Leite moved to France during Covid, 'exactly because of the lack of everything during the Bolsonaro government.' 'I could not work,' says the producer. She is now co-producing the latest feature from Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour), which will be a big-budget historical drama set to shoot next year in Brazil, and developing projects from newcomers Pedro Pinho (The Nothing Factory) and Pedro Freire (Malu). Cinema do Brasil also lost most of its funding for four years but stayed afloat by piecing together financing from a variety of other sources. 'People understood the importance of what we do… after the pandemic, our booths at Cannes and Berlin looked like a Formula 1 driver's jersey. We had many different small supporters who helped us continue our work,' says Sturm. Veteran producer Rodrigo Teixeira suggests the Bolsonaro years were a blip in an otherwise upward trajectory for Brazilian cinema going back 25 years. 'It all really started when Central Station opened the Berlin Film Festival. From then until today, there have been a lot of great filmmakers, investment by the state, tax incentives, international partnerships, and people winning prizes outside of Brazil,' he says, who has half a dozen projects on the boil including Gabe Klinger's Isabel. 2019 was a bumper year for Brazilian cinema. Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho's Bacurau won the Cannes Jury Prize, while Karim Aïnouz's The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão clinched the Un Certain Regard award. At Venice, two Brazilian directors, Bárbara Paz and Ricardo Laganaro, won awards, and in San Sebastián, the Brazil-set drama Pacified, backed by Darren Aronofsky, won the top film prize. 'Bolsonaro in power combined with the pandemic killed the industry for two or three years, but we are lucky enough to have great projects, filmmakers, producers, crews, writers and stories, and we've started working again,' says Teixeira. It is too soon to assess whether Lula's audiovisual investments are bearing fruit. So far, the government has prioritized broad investments, like pushing cash into regions of the country that do not have a tradition of filmmaking. Only a portion is being used directly to fund or support projects that will ultimately land in the marketplace. 'It's a matter of public policy. But an important part of this money will arrive in the industry, so there is excitement,' Sturm says. There is currently an open call in the country for producers and filmmakers to submit projects for public funding, which has ignited a frenzy in the local industry. 'The last call attracted something like 1,200 applications for a national grant that will pick only a few projects, so it's very competitive,' Leite says. 'But at least we have this. Under Bolsonaro, we didn't have anything.' São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro remain Brazil's central hubs for film production. Salles' I'm Still Here was shot entirely in the latter, which Leonardo Edde, president of RioFilme, says reinforces the city's reputation as the 'birthplace of Brazilian cinema.' 'In 2024 alone, we registered nearly 9,000 shooting days, making us the most filmed city in Latin America,' Edde says. Lula has also spearheaded a decentralized approach to local production, opening autonomous film offices with their own funds in each of the country's 27 states. The Secret Agent, for example, is shot in the director's home city of Recife, capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, which is also home to a growing cinema scene. 'That is huge in a country with many realities like Brazil,' Liete says. Still, funding projects and supporting local infrastructure is only part of the equation. When these films are made, where will they find their audience? Leite argues that this is where the picture becomes less clear, suggesting that bottlenecks in the distribution chain are also holding local cinema up. 'One of the biggest fragilities of our cinema is that we don't have many independent distribution companies. We don't have any incentives for distribution companies either. They have to fight hard to still exist,' Leite says. 'For our population, we also don't have enough movie theaters.' As of last year, Ancine listed 3,510 operational cinema screens in Brazil. The country has a population of around 211 million. In comparison, the UK, with a population of around 68 million, has 4,587 screens. In the backdrop, there are also questions around the impact on independent producers and the box office of the global streamers, with two bills currently passing through the legislature that would increase tax contributions and introduce quotas on national productions. Menezes says streaming regulation is an imperative that her office is broaching with great care to protect workers' rights and the health of the local production environment. 'It is good for those who produce, for those who finance, and for those who consume. We don't want to tax anything; we want what is fair,' she says. In the meantime, local streamer Globoplay recently embraced a theatrical strategy for its first two feature originals, I'm Still Here and Andrucha Waddington and Breno Silveira's Vitória, giving them long cinema windows. Tatiana Costa, director of content for digital products at Globo, says the strategy was coordinated with all the parties on the film with the group promoting the theatrical release across all its platforms. 'We don't want to cannibalize the cinema and vice-versa,' she says. Commenting on the government's film and TV drive, Globoplay Originals head of drama Alex Medeiros says it goes beyond direct subsidies, noting how a raising of the cap on state money that can be spent on an individual production had also been a game changer. Teixeira also believes the global spotlight placed on Brazilian cinema by I'm Still Here will encourage more international investment. He is also predicting an uptick in non-Brazilian directors coming to the country to shoot, especially out of the U.S., in the current political climate. 'I was talking to an American filmmaker who told me it's impossible for independent filmmakers to do films in the U.S. right now, because the costs are too high, and the streamers are aligned with Donald Trump… There could be options for those filmmakers here in Brazil,' he suggests. Brazil does not currently offer a nationwide incentive, but there are a number of state- and city-based rebate schemes, notably those run by SPcine in São Paulo and RioFilme in Rio de Janeiro. In the backdrop to this positive wave, the spectre of Bolsonaro as well as that of the military junta captured in I'm Still Here remains in the air. While Bolsonaro failed to kill off Brazilian cinema, the former stopped the country's Cinema Nova in its tracks, leaving a void that would not be filled again until the 1990s and early '00s with films like Central Station and City of God. 'Continuity is at the core of what will ensue, but we're certainly living in a moment of vitality,' says Salles. Edde describes the current moment as 'a new era for the Brazilian audiovisual sector.' 'And more than just celebrating this moment,' he says. 'We are ready to turn it into concrete business opportunities and social and economic development.' 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Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Brazil Named Country of Honor at 2025 Cannes Film Market
Brazil will be the official country of honor at this year's Marché du Film, the Cannes film market, an acknowledgment of the growing strength of Brazilian cinema internationally. Brazilian cinema is riding a wave right now, helped by the global success of Walter Salles' political drama I'm Still Here, which is up for 3 Oscars this weekend: Best International Feature, Best Actress for lead Fernanda Torres, and Best Film. More from The Hollywood Reporter Vice and ITV Join Forces in Distribution Deal as Freddie Flintoff Makes TV Return With 'Bullseye' Amazon, SkyShowtime Execs Talk Partnerships, Influencers, Content Cadence, Windows Max and Tubi Executives Outline U.K. Strategies at MIP London The Brazilian industry will have a strong presence throughout the Marché, which runs from May 13 to May 21 during the 78th Cannes film festival, with key industry figures featuring in events and panels devoted to strengthening international ties and expanding the global reach of Brazilian storytelling. In a great piece of news for market attendees, Brazil will also host the Marché's official opening night party at the Plage des Palmes on May 13. Brazilian cinema has been a near-constant feature in Cannes over the decades, going back at least to 1962 when Anselmo Duarte's religious drama The Given Word won the Palme d'Or. Recent Brazilian Cannes competition entries have included Karim Aïnouz' 2024 erotic thriller Motel Destino, Kleber Mendonça Filho's social drama Aquarius (2016), and Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' neo-Western Bacurau, which won Cannes' jury prize in 2019. 'Brazil has always had a strong presence in international cinema, especially in Cannes,' said Joelma Gonzaga, Secretary of Audiovisual Affairs at Brazil's Ministry of Culture, in a statement. 'This has been consistently reflected at the Marché du Film and being the country of honor in 2025 further cements and amplifies this partnership. This is a unique opportunity to expand our connections, strengthen dialogues and show the world the diversity and creativity of Brazilian cinema.' 'Brazil is a very creative country with a vibrant film industry,' added Marché executive director Guillaume Esmiol. 'We have observed a steady rise in the number of Brazilian professionals in Cannes in recent years, with a 26 percent increase last year alone. With the added significance of the Brazil-France Season, this partnership is a symbol of the global strength of the Brazilian film industry and its strong relation with Cannes.' The Marché recognition coincides with the 200th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between Brazil and France, an event celebrated throughout the year with the cultural initiative Saison Brésil-France (Brazil-France Season). Brazil's culture minister Margareth Menezes said the Cannes market events would further strengthen 'the cultural and artistic ties between our two nations.' Brazil's presence at the Marché du Film will be organized in collaboration with Brazil's Ministry of Culture, the Instituto Guimarães Rosa, and the Embassy of Brazil in Paris. The program will feature exclusive film and documentary showcases, networking events, and presentations of new international co-production initiatives, with further details to be announced in the coming months. Brazil follows Switzerland (2024), Spain (2023), and India (2022) in receiving the country of honor designation, an initiative launched by the Marché du Film to recognize a nation's contributions to the global film industry. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
