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Brazil brought its tropical flair to the Croisette for the opening party of this year’s Marché du Film, held at Plage des Palmes and co-hosted by the market’s Executive Director, Guillaume Esmiol. The evening, which was infused with Brazilian culture and festivities, saw the presence of the country’s Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, as well as Audiovisual Secretary Joelma Gonzaga, and officially marked the start of a series of special activities and initiatives centered around the South American country at the market.

Brazil, the Marché du Film’s 2025 Country of Honor, is currently undergoing a strong resurgence and has a prominent presence at the French festival this year, with the country’s industry delegation doubling in number from 2024. It is now the country with the highest number of participants in Latin America and a burgeoning global power, actively focusing on attracting international partners and fostering co-productions. This...

Exclusive: In our times of diminishing box office receipts, there is, ironically, no greater demonstration of cinema’s enduring power than in the actions of those who try to destroy it.

Take Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former far-right president, who, on his first day in office after a long campaign focused on defence, crime, and financial deregulation, moved to disband the Ministry of Culture, folding the department into an authoritarian, so-called Ministry of Citizenship. What followed were sustained attacks on the country’s cultural field, with a particular focus on cinema. Cash was pulled from national cinema organizations and censors were placed on publicly funded projects, crippling film culture in the nation.

“We found a wasteland of investments,” Margareth Menezes tells us of the country’s film industry at the time. Menezes — a legend of Brazil’s music industry, often described as the queen of Brazilian Afropop — was appointed as...

There is momentum, and there is the current moment of Brazilian cinema. This year, Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” made history as the first-ever Brazilian film by a Brazilian director to win an Oscar, scoring Best International Feature and bringing the country its first best picture nomination as well as a best actress nomination for Fernanda Torres. The week before, Gabriel Mascaro won the prestigious Berlinale Silver Bear for “The Blue Trail,” with the country having a chance at winning another major festival award with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” playing in main competition at Cannes, where Brazil is also the Country of Honor at the Marché du Film.

“Brazil stood out immediately with its cinematic heritage, a dynamic industry undergoing a strong resurgence, and a prominent presence in Cannes,” Marché du Film Executive Director Guillaume Esmiol tells Variety of choosing the Country of Honor. “And, of course,...

Despite boasting a huge internal market, Brazil long seemed an island of its own when it came to fostering international collaboration. Alas, these days are long gone, with a ramping number of co-productions inching the country closer and closer to major producing potencies such as the US and Europe.

“New international partners have been seeking us directly,” says Alex Medeiros, Director of Drama, Documentaries, and Films at Globoplay Originals, the streaming powerhouse behind Walter Salles’s history-making, Oscar-winning “I’m Still Here.” Globo is the biggest production force in Latin America, and currently has partnerships with Gaumont, Beta Film, Fremantle, and Disney, the latter a co-production deal for four films, including “Na Linha de Fogo,” directed by Afonso Poyart (“Solace”).

Globo has a key advantage of producing over 11 thousand hours of novelas a year, a fast-moving audiovisual bootcamp that produces not only a large volume of talent in front and behind the camera,...

The scenes of celebration across Brazil in Carnival season when Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here won the Best International Feature Film Oscar in March were akin to the country winning the World Cup.

The excitement followed a post-pandemic record-breaking $35.6 million box office in Brazil for the drama starring Fernanda Torres as real-life figure Eunice Paiva, whose husband Rubens Paiva disappeared from their home in the early years of Brazil’s 1964-85 military dictatorship.

“That explosion of joy in the middle of the Carnival, which is the peak of our popular culture and the best of Brazil, the best of our collective capacity to actually say who we are, was extraordinary,” says Salles.

Related: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Cannes Film Festival Premiere Photos: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Angela Bassett, Hannah Waddingham & More

The victory came hot on the heels of the Berlinale Grand Jury Prize win for Brazilian filmmaker...

Following a history-making first Oscar win for the country with Walter Salles’s “I’m Still Here,” Brazil continues to pick up momentum as this year’s Country of Honor at the Marché du Film, which runs alongside the 78th Festival de Cannes from May 13-21. The market has just announced a series of events to celebrate the country in Cannes, including a panel on the country’s audiovisual ecosystem featuring Minister of Culture Margareth Menezes and a focused Co-Production Day connecting ten Brazilian producers to French counterparts through a series of curated meetings.

The honor also marks a fast growth in attendance for Brazilian industry players at the Marché, with a whopping 50% increase from previous years. This boost signals how Brazilian organizations are keen to bank on the country’s momentum, with subsidies made available to attendees via the country’s Ministry of Culture, as well as companies such as Projeto Paradiso,...

Brazil will be the official country of honor at this year’s Marché du Film, the Cannes film market, an acknowledgment of the growing strength of Brazilian cinema internationally.

Brazilian cinema is riding a wave right now, helped by the global success of Walter Salles’ political drama I’m Still Here, which is up for 3 Oscars this weekend: Best International Feature, Best Actress for lead Fernanda Torres, and Best Film.

The Brazilian industry will have a strong presence throughout the Marché, which runs from May 13 to May 21 during the 78th Cannes film festival, with key industry figures featuring in events and panels devoted to strengthening international ties and expanding the global reach of Brazilian storytelling.

In a great piece of news for market attendees, Brazil will also host the Marché’s official opening night party at the Plage des Palmes on May 13.

Brazilian cinema has been a near-constant feature in Cannes over the decades,...

Brazil will be the country of honor at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film, running from May 13 to 21.

The spotlight comes amid Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s drive to make the audiovisual sector a key pole of his country’s economic strategy.

The news of the focus also comes at time when Brazilian cinema is enjoying international attention thanks to a buzzy awards season run for director Walter Salles’ political drama I’m Still Here, which is nominated for three Academy Awards.

Brazil’s participation at the Marché du Film also aligns with the France-Brazil Season, agreed last summer by French President Emmanuel Macron and Lula to celebrate the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations.

The multidisciplinary initiative running across 2025 aims to strengthen bilateral ties and generate joint responses to contemporary political, social and ecological challenges.

The country of honor program is...

Brazil’s on fire, and rapidly putting into place the policies that will rebuild its film and TV industries, which look set to transform it into the film-tv powerhouse of Latin America.

That cuts several ways.

Under Jair Bolsonaro, Brazilian president over 2019-2022, ApexBrasil, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Agency, saw its funding for Brazil’s audiovisual sector almost entirely nixed.

Often working together, promotion agency Cinema do Brasil, backed by Audiovisual Industry Syndicate of the State of São Paulo (Siesp), Projeto Paradiso, a philanthropic org focusing on new talent and project development, and Sp Cine, the energetic São Paulo City film commission, did an extraordinary job to support and promote Brazilian filmmakers and companies’ presence at festivals, drawing on highly contained resources.

That was then. “When President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office [on Jan. 1] and appointed new ApexBrasil head Jorge Viana, who is highly supportive of the creative industries,...

Brazil is back.

Brazilian President’s Lula Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government, which took office on Jan. 1, looks set to invest just under $1 billion in 2023 into the country’s audiovisual sector.

It’s one of the biggest upticks in government film and TV aid in history, and comes after Lula predecessor Jair Bolsonaro slowed state aid to a glacial pace. The new financial injection should turn Brazil into the film and TV powerhouse of Latin America.

Brazilian audiovisual secretary Joelma Gonzaga told Variety that regulation of global streaming services operating in Brazil, which foreseeably will introduce quotas for Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and other players, is also on Lula’s government agenda.

Possible steamer investment quotas represent “an urgent question that is a priority for the country’s audiovisual industry: Brazil needs to regulate VOD . Platforms must invest in audiovisual production, and Brazil needs to have control of this intellectual property,...

Brazil’s newly elected President, Inácio Lula da Silva, has said his government will re-establish the country’s Ministry of Culture after it was disbanded by his right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, in 2019.

In a series of widescale pledges published on his first day in office, Lula said his government will reopen the ministry “with the ambition to resume more intensely the policies of incentive and access to cultural goods” that he said was “interrupted by obscurantism in recent years.”

“A democratic cultural policy cannot fear criticism or elect favorites,” he said.

Lula, who is serving his third term in office, added: “May all the flowers sprout and all the fruits of our creativity be harvested, may everyone enjoy it without censorship or discrimination.”

Estamos refundando o Ministério da Cultura, com a ambição de retomar mais intensamente as políticas de incentivo e de acesso aos bens culturais, interrompidas pelo obscurantismo nos últimos anos.