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Don’t expect Brazilian filmmakers to return emails on Monday. Many will be sleeping off joyously celebrating. In a historic turnaround election victory, leftist incumbent Lula staged a dramatic run-off comeback victory Sunday,
beating far-right Flávio Bolsonaro to secure a fourth term as Brazil’s President. This is the first time in the history of Brazil’s democratic elections that a candidate who has come second in the first-round elections has won the second round.
The win is a defeat for U.S. President Donald Trump, a Bolsonaro ally, and a victory for Brazil’s film industry, which had feared a decimation of governmental movie funding in line with Javier Milei’s huge cuts in Argentina if Bolsonaro were to win.
Lula’s turnaround victory marks a huge win for Brazil’s environment, social politics and health services and stops Latin America’s slide to the right as Europe faces that possibility in France and Spain.
Confirmed by Brazil’s electoral authority, with Lula taking 51.79% of the vote, his triumph is also one for fandom as the election was fought on social media before polling booths. In an unprecedented online wave, the day after Lula came second in the first round, fan accounts for major artists such as Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katseye, Demi Lovato, Harry Styles, Katy Perry, and Selena Gomez ignited a movement, offering their massive platforms to amplify the current president’s campaign and help boost their access to young audiences. More than 600 Brazilian fanbase groups came out in support of Lula in the run-up to the Oct. 25 election, according to the Guardian.
“I’m not sure whether to open this speech with ‘comrades’ or ‘fandoms from all over Brazil’,” Lula said earlier this month, starting a speech at a rally on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista which attracted a crowd estimated by its organizers at over a million.
“We’re inspired by these artists, and Taylor is always talking about how young people should take the lead,” said Josiane, a Swiftie in São Paulo, quoted by the same source.
Social media was reckoned Lula’s Achilles’ Heel, with his own Workers’ Party accusing Meta’s platform Instagram of restricting the reach and sound of its posts, as well as Lula’s profile and visibility on search engines.
On Oct. 19, Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE) gave Meta 24 hours to show that it is not favouring one presidential candidate over the other in its content feeds. (Meta denied any bias but admitted some of Lula’s campaign ads were taken offline temporarily due to technical errors.)
In parallel, federal deputy André Janones, a Lula supporter, launched a WhatsApp broadcast channel called “Lula’s Army,” which featured a 90-minute interview with Lula and scaled to 10 million-plus members by runoff time.
Brazil’s predominantly left-leaning film industry and its international counterpart have not stood on the sidelines. Guillermo del Toro, Pedro Almodóvar, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem among many more joined Brazilian stars to urge a vote for Lula, holding up their forefinger and extending their thumb in an “L” sign repeated on stage by Jordan Firstmanwhen he appeared at the Rio Film Festival early October to present “Club Kid.”
Variety reported on site in detail from the RioFest’s RioMarket, in an article which went viral in Brazil how, having talked for an hour on a panel with Rodrigo Santoro, renowned director Marcelo Gomes lifted his hand and makes an “L” sign. “The room bursts into applause.” That was before the first-round election.
Two days later on Oct. 4, where Flávio Bolsonaro won a leading 47.03% to Lula’s 45.16%, the festival was sunk in a “visible veil of grief and gloom,” Variety reported.
Over the last two years,Brazilian cinema has exploded on the world stage, Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” winning an International Feature Oscar and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” a record four Academy Award nominations for a Brazilian film this year. Gabriel Mascaro’s “The Blue Trail” scooped the Berlin Festival’s Grand Prize in 2025. Now, Variety reported, Brazilian cinema was“at risk.”
That has not come to happen. In an acceptance speech on Oct. 25 Lula promised governmental moneys for healthcare, books and culture.
With Lula’s fourth mandate, Brazil looks set to remain a huge oasis of progressive pro-film governmental policies, aiding filmmakers throughout the region, seen in the latest films, for example, of Rodrigo Teixeira.
Much of Latin America’s film industry, looking to Brazil for co-production partnership and as a bastion of democracy, will share Lula’s supporters’ jubilation and a sense of relief.
