Made during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s unusual documentary traces Recife’s cinematic past and what remains. In digging into its history, the director would write his near future, developing the ideas and motifs that would coalesce into his political thriller The Secret Agent.
Daniel Bandeira’s unusual hostage thriller asks necessary and uncomfortable questions about class, labour and inequality in Brazil, exploring what he calls ‘the fear machine’ of heightening, mutual societal mistrust and polarisation.
Following Brazil’s phenomenal representation at the Oscars this year, we revisit Héctor Babenco’s 1985 queer prison drama, a film with some surprising parallels with this year’s main contender.
Auteur Mário Peixoto’s sole cinematic work is a haunting silent film following three people who’d rather die at sea than continue on land. If you’re looking to trace the roots and reach of Brazilian cinema, Limite must be on your path.
Karim Aïnouz’s neon-lit 2024 thriller is his most visually distinctive work yet, stirring up a tense, caged love story and an increasingly dangerous power struggle in the surreal environs of a seedy roadside motel.
Lázaro Ramos’ 2020 dystopian speculative thriller unpacks the racist past and present with a nightmare scenario in which Brazil tries to excise its Black population with a mass deportation order.
It’s deflating to see international cinema sidelined from the BAFTA longlists, in a politically unsettling year when we need international voices to be part of the conversation.
A latterday offering from the legendary LC Barreto stable, unfolding the bittersweet love story of Brazilian architect Lota de Macedo Soares and American poet Elizabeth Bishop against the backdrop of the incoming Brazilian dictatorship.
A 13 year old girl in a remote village in the Amazon tries to escape a cycle of abuse. Developed from 10 years of research, documentary filmmaker Marianna Brennand’s first narrative feature explores unspoken truths and networks of complicity.
Through the eyes of an academic on the run, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s acclaimed, quixotic opus honours the irreplaceable, ordinary lives and stories that a corrupt dictatorship and its enforcers snuff out – and the struggle to hold onto integrity, memory and life itself.
