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RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Inside one of the refrigerated rooms of the Armazém da Utopia, the beautiful portside warehouse where the Rio Film Festival’s RioMarket takes place, renowned director Marcelo Gomes lifts his
hand and makes an “L” sign. The room bursts into applause. Gomes had been sitting for over an hour alongside “The Blue Trail” actor Rodrigo Santoro and Rio Film Festival director Ilda Santiago by the time the upcoming presidential elections came up.
It was Friday morning, two days before the polls were due to open, and the room had flooded with people sporting Lula stickers attached to their T-shirts, the bright shades of red popping against the dark grey of the walls. That is because Lula, Brazil’s current president and campaigning candidate, had been parading the centre of Rio just a few hundred meters away from the port. As the hundreds of thousands of people made their way down the narrow roads following the politician, a few rerouted into the industry event, still carrying big flags and with faces lit up with hope.
“To me, the greatest diplomatic tool – the greatest instrument for countries and governments to understand one another and come to the table with a different perspective – is cinema,” says Santiago on stage while alerting the audience to the importance of strong public policies as the foundation of a healthy film industry. “I view cinema as a powerful diplomatic weapon.”
Having one of the most important presidential elections in the history of Brazil take place during the country’s largest film festival makes for a very particular encounter. Brazil, one of the greatest cinema nations in the world, has reaffirmed its international reach and success in grand fashion in the last two years: Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” won the country its first Oscar in 2025, with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” bringing Brazil back to the glitzy awards earlier this year after picking up two prizes at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The sentiment has been palpable in festivals and markets around the world: Brazil is on the up and up. It is the country to bet on.
But this success, of course, has not happened in a miraculous silo. Brazil’s renewed industry is the product of Lula’s public policies. The president is perhaps the most culture-and arts-focused in the history of the country, having hosted regular screenings of Brazilian films at the presidential residency in Brasília and investing heavily in the country’s film sector following four years of a Jair Bolsonaro government that almost immediately did nothing to counteract a court judgement’s stripping away of near all public support for cinema.
Bolsonaro’s presidency was confirmed mere months before Mendonça Filho’s “Bacurau” and Karim Aïnouz’s “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” both picked up awards at the Cannes Film Festival, a moment that could have pushed the country’s cinema to a rise similar to the one we have seen in the last two years. The government that came soon after brought it all to a screeching, heavily consequential halt. Soon after taking over the presidency, Bolsonaro cut the budgets for the National Cinema Agency (ANCINE) and the Audiovisual Sector Fund (FSA) by nearly 43%. Before the COVID-19 pandemic that further accentuated the sectorial crisis, the Bolsonaro government was behind an 18-month freeze of public funds for the national agency.
Conversely, once Lula was reelected in 2022, he pledged an investment of R$1.6 billion ($298 million) to support the national production of film and television, with federal funding targeting local audiovisual production to boost both the domestic and international markets. Lula’s government focused on tax incentives and subsidies, and installed cinema screen quotas to support the exhibition of Brazilian films in national cinemas. The results are staggering: last year, an Oxford Economics study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association revealed that the Brazilian audiovisual industry generated over 58% more jobs than the automotive industry, generating over 600,000 direct and indirect jobs.
Now, having experienced a reality where public policies contribute to a thriving industry, local producers, filmmakers, and film workers are faced with a devastating scenario. Last night, in the tightest presidential race in the history of Brazil, Lula took second place to Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio, the former gathering 45.16% of valid votes against the latter’s 47.03%.
The future for national cinema is bleak under a potential Flávio Bolsonaro presidency, with the candidate vowing to mimic virtually all of his father’s policies—and tighten some even further. The Senator is also currently under investigation by the Federal Police for alleged money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption related to the financing of Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “Dark Horse,” an English-language biopic about former president Bolsonaro starring “The Passion of the Christ” actor Jim Caviezel as the far-right politician.
Authorities are currently looking at around R$61 million ($12 million) in funds provided by Daniel Vorcaro, the owner of Brazil’s Banco Master, to finance the film. Leaked messages show Flávio Bolsonaro himself directly negotiating payments with Vorcaro to fund the inflated project. Vorcaro is currently in prison, accused of multi-million financial fraud. He was detained in early March after a judge cited “strong indication” that he attempted to bribe a former central bank director.
Films playing at this year’s edition of the Rio Film Festival have tried to grasp the dire effects of the first Bolsonaro administration. Miguel Antunes Ramos “Dragons” is a portrayal of the images that have shaped Jair Bolsonaro’s political myth, from his early days on YouTube to the end of his term. João Paulo Cuenca’s “144 – Apocalypse Not” sees the director go on a vast road trip across the country in the aftermath posting a satiric tweet about the former president that resulted in 144 lawsuits and hundreds of thousands of death threats from the extreme right-wing movement within the Evangelical church. Dandara Ferreira’s “Anatomy of Chaos” offers unparalleled access to the Brazilian Senate to chronicle the high-profile congressional investigation on the federal government’s handling of and omissions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When they were scheduled to play in Rio, they were seen as an encapsulation of a nefarious past the country was ready to move away from. Now, as they first meet audiences, they feel a stark premonition.
The day before the elections, Aïnouz declared his vote for Lula while on stage at the Rio Film Festival to present “Rosebush Pruning.”The Brazilian director began a pro-Lula chant at the end of his speech, which mentioned the key role of public policies in fomenting his lauded career. As one walked the corridors of Armazém da Utopia ahead of polls opening, the feeling was still one of hope. On Monday morning, however, a visible veil of grief and gloom took over the previous sheen.
“The possible return to power by the same group that governed the country between 2019 and 2022 is a catastrophe,” veteran producer Paula Cosenza, head of label Trema, tells Variety. “The far-right candidate questions the legitimacy of artistic creation, academic knowledge, science, and the free exercise of the press, becoming a concrete threat to democracy. The previous experience left as a legacy the complete paralysis of the audiovisual sector, cuts in funding for public universities, in research, and a toll of more than 700,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the pandemic. Cultural public policies should be state policies, but in Brazil, they seem to be government policies.”
Gomes echoes that thought, adding that the national audiovisual industry is of “great economic importance for Brazil.” “It is an industry recognized internationally, and that has reaped several major awards in recent years. An eventual change into a government that does not value culture can put all of that at risk.”
Ricardo Alves Jr., whose “The French Teacher” just premiered to acclaim in San Sebastián and is now playing in Rio, says he is “saddened” to realize how the semi-dystopian, conservative reality of his thriller is edging closer to real life in his home country. “Last night can only be seen as a horror film, watching the advancement of the far-right in the Congress, Senate and state governments,” he says.
“To elect Lula in the second round is essential to create a barrier against the total destruction of conquered rights, whether in education, human rights, or culture,” he adds. “The project that the extreme right presents is total destruction. Something even worse than 2018 is coming, when artistic production was severely attacked.”
It is poignant to be writing this report from the Armazém da Utopia, literally translated as the Warehouse of Utopia. It is here, with eyes turned towards the still possible, the still beating dream of a thriving industry, that the market is nurturing itself with hope as Brazil heads for a tense, future-defining second round in the polls.
