Tense Presidential Elections, a Focus on Domestic Audiences and Oscars Closer Than Ever: 10 Takeaways From the Rio Film Festival

Hosting a film festival during historic presidential elections destined to shape an entire country’s future is a hefty ask, but this year’s Rio Film Festival managed to carefully and purposefully thread the lines between focusing on the cinema and the industry of today and not turning a blind eye to the issues of tomorrow.

This year’s edition, which ran Oct. 1-11, was bookended by two buzzy queer films in Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra” and Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid,” and introduced audiences to a promising crop of Brazilian cinema. Major national titles at the festival included 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,” and Venice Queer Lion winner “London,” by Victor di Marco and Márcio Picoli.

The bright corridors of RioMarket were also filled with enthusiastic industry experts and producers queuing up for sessions on burning issues like Artificial Intelligence and audience development through TikTok. Below, Variety’s main takeaways from this year’s festival, from the strong presence of young audiences to narrower bridges to Spain and a market focus on domestic audiences.

Politics at the centre

There was no escape. With the festival’s first weekend coinciding with the Brazilian presidential elections, almost every conversation overheard at RioMarket during the event’s early days was intertwined with politics. Following the result of the first round, which saw current president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva lose to far-right candidate Flávio Bolsonaro by less than 2%, Variety published an in-depth report on the consequences of a possible Bolsonaro mandate for the country’s burgeoning cinema. Two days later, Variety also broke the news of how several high-profile Brazilian film figures — including Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura, Fernando Meirelles and Petra Costa — signed an open letter calling international attention to the upcoming second round of elections, taking place on Oct. 25.

Despite the tensions brought up by the elections, there was a latent sense of camaraderie and hope at the festival in the days since the first round at the polls. Several filmmakers have taken up to the stage at the festival to declare their support of Lula, including “Club Kid” director Jordan Firstman, who raised his hand into an “L” sign while introducing the festival’s closing film at the Odeon on Saturday night.

Audience development needs screening rooms

At several of this year’s panels at the festival’s industry sidebar, RioMarket, key executives and producers frequently mentioned the need for audience development in Brazil. The consensus was that the country offers already eager cinephiles, with many young audiences well-versed in international cinema thanks to healthy online communities, but there is still a challenge when it comes to converting those film fans into cinema-goers. In one of the festival’s first industry sessions, an in-conversation event with director Marcelo Gomes and Rodrigo Santoro, festival director Ilda Santiago brought up a burning issue: the still small number of cinema theater screens in Brazil.

The country currently has 3.538 screens, with 43% of these concentrated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The number is still very low when considering Brazil has a population of over 214 million. For reference, the U.S. boasts 35,000 to 40,000 commercial screens for a population of 349 million, and France has 6,355 screens for a population of 69 million.

A co-production power

Following two banner years of international success with Walter Salles’s “I’m Still Here” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” this year saw Brazil make a splash at international festivals with high-profile co-productions. Examples include Abinash Bikram Shah’s “Elephants in the Fog,” Marcelo Martinessi’s “Narciso,” Benjamin Naishtat’s “Glaxo,” Marco Becchis’ “Back to Buenos Aires,” Dominga Sotomayor’s “La Perra,” and Bruno Santamaría Razo’s “Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building.”

This momentum confirmed itself at the festival. Leading production banners such as MyMama Entertainment and Bubbles Project announced upcoming projects during the event, with the former working on Locarno-winner Andrea Štaka’s “Ibicaba: O Paraíso Prometido,” starring Ella Rumpf and Júlio Andrade, and the latter gearing up to shoot “Puan” helmer Maria Alché’s “I Love You, and Today Everything Looks Beautiful.” Several producers have also spoken at industry panels on the importance of finding global partners and alternative financing structures, especially at times of political instability that could see Brazil’s public funds shrink or collapse in the near future.

Domestic audiences matter

While international co-productions are on the up and up, Brazilian producers have reiterated the importance of making films for their domestic audiences. Brazil is a massive market, with keen, enthusiastic audiences that still largely consume foreign films and television, but savvy producers and filmmakers are working to change this trend. Gustavo Mello, partner at major Boutique Filmes banner, told Variety that, since their highly successful Netflix series “3%,” Brazil has remained their top priority. “We need to produce for Brazil, and it needs to remain our focus. When we do this well, our work travels.”

Festival director Ilda Santiago is echoing this movement in her programming of Premiere Brasil, the festival’s section dedicated to Brazilian cinema, which has expanded into several subcategories in recent years. “Brazilian cinema isn’t one singular thing,” she tells 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.”

The kids are alright

In a year where the success of Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” and Curry Barker’s “Obsession” sent the industry into a frenzy, there’s a latent sense of hope for young audiences returning to cinemas. This was proven true in Rio, where young cinephiles lined up outside festival venues, enthusiastically discussing upcoming screenings while scrolling their Letterboxd accounts. Interestingly, young audiences could be seen not only at screenings of major international hits, but also lining up for more obscure festival titles and filling up industry sessions at RioMarket, too. It was heartening to watch attentive school students sit through a key industry session on women in cinema delivered in partnership with the European Film Promotion, and to hear the hubbub of excitable cinephiles gearing up to enter a free screening of “Gugu’s World” at the beautiful FGV Cultural Centre venue.

Genre is key…

Founder of Mórbido Film Fest and executive director of the Fantastic Pavilion at the Marché du Film, Pablo Guisa Koestinger was in Rio for the first time to launch Fantastic: Brasil at the festival. The new industry platform for genre cinema in the country is a partnership between the Fantastic Pavilion Cannes, Rio Market, Festival do Rio, FICCI Industria, #LINK Documentary Industry Meeting, Mórbido Film Fest, and Sitges, and launched three calls for emerging voices in Latin American genre cinema.

Highlights of Brazilian cinema at this year’s festival were also genre titles, including Maju de Paiva and Bernardo Florim’s “Diário do Fogo,” Ricardo Alves Jr.’s psychological thriller “The French Teacher,” and Gustavo Vinagre and Gurcius Gewdner’s B-movie extravaganza “Bowels of Hell.”

… But not just horror

While horror remains king in terms of genre films attracting audiences at the festival, this year’s program showcased how Brazilian filmmakers are taking interesting risks within other genres. Tomás Portella’s “Overman” is the Brazilian response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe — adapted from the comic strips by famed cartoonist Laerte, the film sees star Caco Ciocler play the titular sex-addict superhero in a delightful romp that includes bad guys that torment citizens with stinky farts and an arch-enemy called Dirty Capitalist.

Speaking of delightful, “My First Girlfriend” is another major festival standout. The romantic comedy reunites “City of God” director Kátia Lund with the film’s star Jonathan Haagensen, with the duo co-directing a charming, deeply Brazilian love story led by a promising young cast that includes Faíska Alves, Cecilia Sanchez, Pedro Ottoni and Jordana Morena. Lastly, “Rio” and “Ice Age” director Carlos Saldanha brought Brazil into the realm of the blockbuster adventure film with the ambitious Brazilian closing gala “100 Days,” chronicling Amyr Klink’s pioneering crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in a small rowing boat.

A sturdy bridge to Spain

It was only fitting that Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s Cannes sensation “La Bola Negra” opened this year’s festival given the heavy Spanish presence on the ground in Rio. Veteran Spanish producer Esther García, a longtime collaborator of Pedro Almodóvar’s, presided over this year’s Premiere Brasil jury, while several standout Spanish films played in the program. Titles include Diego Luna’s “Ashes,” Júlia de Paz Solvas’s “The Good Daughter,” and Ian De La Rosa’s “Iván & Hadoum.”

Santiago tells Variety the relationship between Spain and Brazil is a “natural” one, and a bridge that feels ever-strengthened by Brazilians’s growing identification with their Latin roots and interest in Spanish-speaking stories. “Today, I see young people in Brazil actively trying to learn Spanish, which is something I didn’t see 10 years ago,” she says. “There’s this latent desire from a new Brazilian generation to be connected with their Latin heritage and cultural identity.”

“Brazilian cinema wants to be in conversation with Latin cinema, and Latin cinema wants to tap into the huge market that is Brazil,” she adds. “Spain consolidates a lot of Spanish-speaking cinema, and I believe it is the ideal partner to allow us to grow as an industry and build more and more partnerships with the world.”

Real life is a real draw

Turning a corner at Rio’s buzzing Botafogo neighborhood, one would expect the lengthy queues to be for a screening of major festival hits such as “Wild Horse Nine” or “Coward,” but while those films still attracted hordes, some of the longest queues at this year’s festival were for films telling the real-life stories of Brazilian legends. Pedro Waddington’s “Fernanda,” which turns on the career of legendary “Central Station” actress Fernanda Montenegro, was one of the most popular films on the ground, with other buzzy titles including Prime Video’s “Marília Mendonça – Um Sentimento Louco,” Eryk Rocha’s “Elza” and Renato Terra, Marcos Caetano, and Leo Caetano’s “Alucinação.”

Oscars closer than ever

Over the last two years, thanks to “I’m Still Here” and “The Secret Agent,” the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has realized the unparalleled passion of Brazilians online. Last year, Academy CEO Bill Kramer attended the Rio Film Festival for the first time, where he said the furore over Salles’s film was “historic.” “It was exciting to see the growth in our social media channels and the increased audience in Latin America,” he added. “It was incredible to watch videos of people stopping their Carnival celebrations to watch the awards.”

This year, the festival reiterated its partnership with the Academy by inviting Michael Benedict, director of member relations and awards administration, and Taylor Morales, associate director of the film archive – film preservation and public access, to speak at RioMarket. The Academy representatives spoke about Brazil’s importance to the organization, with Benedict noting their “increased” focus on “global cinema” after telling keen audiences how to submit their films to the Oscars.