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A dozen or more of series you wouldn’t want to miss, and in a few cases may have well seen.

“Anti-Kidnapping Unit”

Globoplay

5 x 45’ and 60’

Created by José Junior and José Luiz Magalhães and directed by Lipe Binder, the fourth season of gritty crime series “The Anti-Kidnapping Unit” follows Detective Carlos Mendonça (Silvio Guindane) and Inspector Juliano Santiago (Erom Cordeiro) as they confront the surge of kidnappings that gripped Rio de Janeiro in the late ’80s and ’90s. New series is another partnership between AfroReggae Audiovisual and Globo, which has produced such hits as “Living On a Razor’s Edge,” “Dissident Archangel” and “The Game.” AfroReggae’s commitment to keeping it real meant location shoots in favelas and prisons. “The Anti-Kidnapping Unit” is an original Globoplay production in collaboration with AfroReggae Audiovisual and A Fábrica.

Anti-Kidnapping Unit, Courtesy of Globoplay

“The Artist”

Fifth Season

6 x 45’

Stars align in this new show,...

Now in its fourth season, Globoplay original “The Anti-Kidnapping Unit” is a testament to the investment of the major Brazilian streamer in strong national content that can spawn several seasons. Globo arrives at the buzzy LA Screenings with the international launch of the new batch, which continues to trail Detective Carlos Mendonça (Silvio Guindane) and Inspector Juliano Santiago (Erom Cordeiro) as they tackle the violent wave of kidnappings that plagued Rio de Janeiro between the late ’80s and ’90s.

Created by José Junior and José Luiz Magalhães, and directed by Lipe Binder, “The Anti-Kidnapping Unit” further consolidates a fruitful partnership between AfroReggae Audiovisual and Globo, a collaboration that has also resulted in other national hits such as “Living On a Razor’s Edge,” “Dissident Archangel,” and “The Game.”

AfroReggae Audiovisual CEO José Junior tells Variety that his motivation to continue writing new storylines for the series comes much from the “love...

Few companies in the world have had such as impact on their local film industry than Globo Filmes, the feature co-production arm of Brazilian giant Globo, which is Latin America’s biggest communications conglomerate. Over the last 25 years, Globo Filmes has backed more than 500 movies, almost all through co-production.

Those films have collectively sold 260 million cinema theater admissions, an average of over 10 million admissions a year, accounting for more than 70% of Brazilian market share from 1998-2024.

Globo Filmes greenlights more than 20 movies a year, powering up by far the biggest production slate of any company in Brazil, thanks to article 3A of the country’s audiovisual law, which allows it to tap tax incentives for investing in feature films.

Launching in 1998, Globo Filmes helped accelerate the Brazilian film industry’s recovery after President Fernando Collor de Mello shuttered state film agency Embrafilme in 1990, paralyzing production. Twenty-five years later, after a...

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Rivers of Dust,” Anna Muyleart’s “Geni and the Zeppelin” and “Pearl Motel,” fromJorge Furtado, feature among potential nine brand new projects announced at the Cannes Festival by Globo Filmes, the theatrical film co-production arm of Brazilian TV giant Globo.

With Mendonça Filho deep in pre-production on political thriller “The Secret Agent,” co-produced by France’s Mk Productions, details on “Rivers of Dust,” save that he will re-team on it with Juliano Dornelles after their 2019 Cannes Jury Prize winner “Bacurau.”

Elsewhere, the new projects speak volumes of Globo Filmes’ current content focus. There’s the broad spectrum. . Titles straddle commercial plays – gay espionage operatives comedy “Special Agents” from Pedro Antônio – “A” list festival plays such as “Rivers” and Geni” and cross-over titles such as sex-laced situation comedy “Pearl Motel.”

Above all, additions to Globo Filmes’ development slate underscore two of its biggest investment priorities.

One is diversity.

It’s been rare in recent decades that Latin American free to air tv has ventured into social drama as the realism needed to handle the genre has often been deemed to gritty to be entertaining.

That’s not been the case for Brazil’s Globo however, which has moved waves and dales, which reaping prizes, with series such as “Under Pressure” or “Jailers,” that grip audiences while examining the lives of doctors and prison guards.

As the Brazilian broadcaster presented its new lineup at Mipcom, Globo shared a sneak peek of its new series “Second Call,” an ensemble series which follows the daily life of the teachers and students at a state school on the outskirts of São Paolo.

Co-produced by O2 Filmes, which is co-run by “City of God’s” Fernando Meirelles, directed by Joana Jabace and written by Carla Faour and Julia Spadaccini, “Second Chance” stresses the...

The 15th annual Rio International Film Festival winners were announced on October 10 at an awards ceremony held at the festival’s downtown Armazem 6 dockland pavilion.Scroll down for full list of winners

As in every year, the awards were exclusively for domestic films that screened in the Premiere Brasil section, dedicated to new work from local directors.

For the first time in festival history the most prestigious prize, the Redentor award presented to the Best Fiction Feature, was shared between two films, both from first-time directors: Caru Alves de Souza’s Underage (De Menor) and Fernando Coimbra’s Wolf At The Door (O Lobo Atrás da Porta).

Underage touches on a topical subject that divides Brazilian society about reducing the age of criminal responsibility for heinous crimes.

It follows the steps of a young woman, Helena (Rita Batata), a recently graduated attorney who works as a public defender of children and adolescents and also takes care of...