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From TV soaps to the supreme court to the top job, Christian fundamentalists are on a power-grab in the country. We meet the director of Apocalypse in the Tropics, a new film charting their rise

Petra Costa was rewatching footage of what has become a historic speech made in 2021 by Jair Bolsonaro, the then Brazilian president, when suddenly she noticed something that went largely unnoticed at the time. Addressing thousands of supporters in São Paulo, the far-right leader lashed out at a supreme court justice, and said he would only leave the presidency “in prison or dead”. This statement is now cited as evidence against Bolsonaro, who is currently on trial, accused of attempting a coup to overturn his 2022 election defeat to current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro denies these allegations.

But what caught Costa’s eye in the footage was Bolsonaro’s gaze. As he shouted into the microphone,...

Academy Award-nominated documentarian Petra Costa is returning to her native Brazil to capture a universal truth: Christian nationalism has become embedded within international politics. Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” poses the question: “When does a democracy end, and theocracy begin?,” as the logline states. “Weaving together past and present, the film holds a mirror up to the rest of the world.”

The doc examines the rises of current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former President Jair Bolsonaro, and the nation’s leading televangelist Silas Malafaia. In short, the film is billed as being a “cinematic investigation of the fault lines that emerge when religion fuels political ambition.”

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” is written, directed, and produced by Costa, with Alessandra Orofino co-writing and producing. The executive producers are Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jenny Raskin, Jim and Susan Swartz, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jeffrey Lurie, Marie Therese Guirgis,...

Exclusive: When does a democracy end, and a theocracy begin? That’s the key question in Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa’s urgent new documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics, set to open in select theaters in the U.S. and UK on July 11, and in Brazil this Thursday, and premiering worldwide on Netflix on July 14.

Costa’s film doesn’t focus on, say, Iran or Afghanistan – where theocratic control of government has become a norm — but in a place where separation of church and state is enshrined in the constitution: her native Brazil. That idea, central to Brazilian democracy and American tradition as well, is coming under increasing threat from the rise of Christian nationalism. In Christian nationalist thinking – surging in Brazil and the U.S. – an avenging Jesus from out of the Book of Revelations suits up for battle with his opponents, eager to spill blood to achieve God’s will.

Few environmental documentaries begin with quite the urgency that “Yanuni” does. Even fewer blend political thrills with meditative visual poetry, but Austrian director Richard Ladkani strikes this balance with an even hand in his intimate chronicle of Juma Xiapaia, a brave Indigenous activist in Brazil and the first woman elected chief in the Amazon’s Middle Xingu region.

A fierce figure usually seen with tribal face paint and a feathered headdress, Juma is introduced through archival news clips from 2009, in which the smiling but forceful teenager commits to the Indigenous cause, claiming she’s ready to die for her people. Six assassination attempts later, the now-adult chieftain appears during a 2021 demonstration outside the National Congress Palace in Brasilia, which turns violent when riot police open fire on protesters. Juma and the camera are both near enough to the chaos to see muzzle flashes up close. This is just one of...

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...

Apocalypse in the Tropics, a powerful Portuguese-language documentary feature about the rise and impact of Christian nationalism in Brazil, with eerie echoes of its rise and impact in America, will be eligible for recognition during the 2025-2026 awards season despite having screened at numerous major film festivals in 2024, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

Indeed, the film, which was written, produced and directed by Oscar nominee Petra Costa (2019’s The Edge of Democracy), and which Netflix acquired in December 2024 after it played to strong receptions at the Venice, Telluride, New York and IDFA film festivals last fall, will receive an awards-qualifying theatrical run over the summer and will then drop on the streaming service on July 14.

Netflix also regards it as one of its top non-fiction award season priorities, along with 2025 Sundance acquisition The Perfect Neighbor.

THR’s August 2024 review of Apocalypse in the Tropics described the film as “riveting,” not...

“Clarice and the Stars,” soccer star Vinicius Jr.’s first movie as a producer, and envelope-pushing “Amanda and Caio,” with an all trans-gender cast, feature in an impactful and committed Festival do Rio Goes to Cannes showcase, plumbing issues of race, gender and ultraconservatism.

Heading to the Cannes Film Festival, whose Marché du Film market will host five Goes To showcases staged by film festivals around the world, Festival do Rio Goes to Cannes is to unspool on May 17.

If clips are anything to go by, a cute coming of age fantasy drama, movie “Clarice and the Stars” is produced by Brazil’s Luminar and co-produced by Aurora Aurora E² and Brazil’s Instituto Vini Jr., a non-governmental organization (Ngo) founded by the Real Madrid player in 2021 targeting access to education for children from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

“Amanda and Caio” marks the latest film from Daniel Ribeiro who won a Berlinale...

170 world leaders have joined an estimated 250,000 people gathered in Rome to farewell Pope Francis, whose funeral took place at St Peter’s Basilica.

Watch Live: How To Watch Pope Francis’ Funeral From Cable Networks To Streaming

US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy was among the high-profile figures to take their seats in front of The Vatican. Prince William attended on behalf of the UK’s King Charles and was seen paying his respects in front of Francis’s coffin ahead of the service.

Zelenskyy’s appearance prompted a spontaneous burst of applause from the crowd gathered in St Peter’s Square. Trump is accompanied by his wife Melania.

Other guests to confirm their attendance included French President Emmanuel Macron and UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

It is expected...

Brazil’s film industry has reached a new pinnacle with I’m Still Here securing the Oscar for Best International Feature Film. Directed by Walter Salles, the political drama has not only garnered global attention but has also placed Brazil’s cinematic achievements firmly on the world stage.

The victory, announced at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 2, represents a breakthrough for both Brazilian cinema and Globo, the media giant behind the film’s production. I’m Still Here is the first movie produced with support from Globo’s streaming service, Globoplay, to win an Academy Award. This success coincides with the 100th anniversary of Globo, making it a particularly poignant moment for the company.

Manuel Belmar, Globo’s Director of Finance, Legal, Infrastructure, and Digital Products, expressed pride in the achievement, noting that the win exemplifies the company’s long-standing commitment to supporting Brazilian talent. “Seeing this talent...

Over its long history, the Oscars has changed how society views gay rights with Philadelphia, war veterans with The Best Years of Our Lives, Holocaust history thanks to Schindler’s List, whistleblowers with On the Waterfront and Native Americans in Dances With Wolves.

Sunday’s ceremony could add a significant entry to that list — and one with potentially even more tangible impact.

I’m Still Here — Walter Salles’ fact-based movie about a woman’s quiet resistance after her politician husband is disappeared by Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1971 — has been turbocharging political conversation in its home country since its release in the fall. If it wins a prize on March 2, the turn could help prompt the country’s liberal Supreme Court to come down on former leader Jair Bolsonaro and potentially even quash a revival of a far-right movement.

“The movie is already very unique in how it’s helped people...

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...

In crafting the story of “I’m Still Here,” which chronicles the forced disappearance of a husband and father during the military dictatorship in Brazil, filmmaker Walter Salles didn’t have to imagine much: Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Salles was close with the man’s family. “I had a very personal link to the story,” he told TheWrap Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman. “When I was 13 years old, I [knew] this family at the heart of the film.”

That family is the Paivas. In 1971, the regime that was in power from 1964 to 1985 arrested patriarch Rubens Pavia in his home on suspicion of political dissidence. His loved ones never saw him again. In the film, which is Brazil’s Oscar entry for international feature, Fernanda Torres plays Rubens’ wife, Eunice Pavia, a formidable woman who became a human rights lawyer and devoted her life to uncovering what happened to her husband (played by...

Welcome to ElectionLine’s A View From Abroad series, in which we speak with media figures who are not from America but keep a close eye on its politics. Every few weeks, these smart observers provide a unique perspective on the fraught and unpredictable campaign for the White House. This week, our interview is with Patrícia Vasconcellos, the White House correspondent for Sbt, one of Brazil’s biggest free-to-air TV networks.

As the shots rang out near Butler, Pennsylvania, Patrícia Vasconcellos was ready. The Brazilian journalist, who has been stationed in the U.S. for years, was working that Saturday in July and went live soon after Donald Trump escaped the rally stage with an ear wound, but most importantly, his life.

Vasconcellos broadcast the news to viewers of Sbt, the Brazilian free-to-air TV network that reaches a whopping 90M people every day. She is an experienced hand on television,...

There was something about the Paiva family’s house that Walter Salles never forgot. It was a few blocks from the beach in Rio de Janeiro. The doors and gates were always unlocked, the windows open to let in sunlight and ocean breezes. It was filled with music and dancing, parties and people, debates and ideas. But that all changed in 1971 when Rubens Paiva, a former leftist congressman turned engineer, was hauled away by the police or the military (it wasn’t initially clear) to be interrogated, tortured and, eventually, murdered. That left his wife Eunice and their five children to pick up the pieces and search for answers something in short supply since Brazil was seven years into a military dictatorship that would last for 14 more.

“There was such a vitality to the house. It was a place we all wanted to drift through,” says Salles, who was a...

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said his clash with Elon Musk over social network X shows that the world is not “obligated to put up with [the tech mogul]’s far-right anything goes [agenda] just because he is rich.”

The comments made during an interview with CNN Brasil come after Brazil’s Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold a ban on X in the country on Monday. Lula’s government had on Friday ordered the ban after X refused to obey court orders to remove profiles that were considered to be spreading disinformation. Brazil also wanted X to name a local legal representative, which had not happened.

“The Brazilian justice system may have given an important signal that the world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s extreme right-wing anything goes [agenda] just because he is rich,” the Brazilian President said on Monday.

Brazil’s courts have been cracking down...

For opponents of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — which is to say, among other things, opponents of anti-Indigenous discrimination, deforestation, abortion bans, institutional homophobia and Covid denialism — his loss in the country’s 2022 general election was a relief, but hardly a new dawn. The presidency may once more be held by liberal veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (popularly known as just Lula) of the center-left Workers’ Party, but the demographic shifts and political machinations that enabled the recent far-right takeover still cast a long shadow on a nation beset with economic inequality and social unrest. “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest,” says Petra Costa, pointedly borrowing from the Book of Luke, midway through her compellingly impassioned new documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” which rakes with a heavy heart through the recent past while casting an anxious eye to the future.

The heart-on-sleeve expressions of shame, fear and tenuous,...

As a Brazilian, Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” — a documentary that, in all but name, is her follow-up to the Oscar-nominated “The Edge of Democracy” – is a tough watch. Much like in that previous doc, this is a record of some of the most turbulent, heart wrenching and anxiety-inducing years in the country’s history, specifically the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and his horrible administration during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The viral outbreak, however, is merely a chapter of this broad account of how Bolsonaro came to be, who supported him, and how he then abandoned them. The apocalypse in the title is actually a reference to the Biblical book of Revelation (titled “Apocalipse” in Brazilian Portuguese), which points to Costa’s chosen frame of reference for her new, first-person narrated film: Christianity. Or, to be more precise, how the former president and his close circle weaponized millions of...

Brazilian documentarian Petra Costa continues to chronicle the dire state of democracy in her homeland with the eye-opening exposé Apocalypse in the Tropics (Apocalipse nos Trópicos), delving into the troubling ties linking Christian evangelism and politics all the way up to the highest office.

As in her Oscar-nominated 2019 feature, The Edge of Democracy, Costa gets up close and personal with some very powerful people, capturing them during a wave of social and political unrest that has plagued Brazil over the past decade. This time, she focuses primarily on Silas Malafaia — a popular TV preacher who holds great sway over politicians on both the left and right, in a country where evangelists represent over 30% of the population.

With its portrayal of fundamentalist agitators, fake news purveyors, the very Trump-like Jair Bolsonaro, and, during an explosive finale, an attack on the country’s capital waged by hordes of insurrectionists, the similarities between...

Exclusive: Last time we heard from Oliver Stone, he was in Cannes for a special screening of Lula, his documentary on the incredible comeback of Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio da Silva and his reemergence from a prison cell to the presidency when it was exposed by a hacker that he was the target of an effort to bring Lula down. The three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker said at that time he had one more ambitious narrative film he was hellbent on directing. He has just signed with Atlas Artists for representation in all areas to make that dream a reality.

Stone would not divulge what this project is, nor would his new rep team elaborate. Suffice to say it will have a strong point of view, as he has shown on an acclaimed resume that includes Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Heaven and Earth,...

A passenger plane carrying 62 people crashed on the outskirts of São Paulo on Friday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva confirmed. Dramatic footage from the scene showed the plane’s destroyed fuselage engulfed in flames on the ground. During a speech at a naval event, Lula abruptly interrupted his address to report the tragedy. “It appears that everyone on board may have died…

Source...

The 1986 war drama "Platoon" was Oliver Stone's fourth film as a director, but it proved to be his breakout in the public consciousness. Before 1986, Stone helmed two horror movies and a biopic of war photographer Richard Boyle ("Salvador"), but "Platoon" put him on the map. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won four, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stone immediately emerged as an enfent terrible, ready to interrogate and criticize previously romanticized American institutions. He also became wildly ambitious, seemingly possessing the temerity to assume his films would change the way the public thinks. In some cases, he was right. 

Stone wore his politics on his sleeve, and often spoke about how much he hated the American right wing. Two of his films are deeply critical biopics of Republican presidents, and several of his more recent documentaries analyze politicians in power. He has turned his lens on Vladimir Putin,...

As Brazil rebuilds as Latin America’s major production force, German film-tv giant Beta Film has made its first move outside Europe, backing Janeiro Studios, based in Rio and led by former Beta Film top exec Koby Gal Raday and Rio Fest head Ilda Santiago.

A fourth partner will be Brazilian producer Mayra Faour Auad’s MyMama Entertainment.

Gal Raday will serve as CEO, Santiago as MD.

The Studios’ launch catches Brazil’s film and TV in the first full flush of growth, sluiced by public funding with more quite possibly on the way.

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva unveiled plans at Rio’s Quanta Studios last week to invest R$1.6 billion ($295 million) in Brazilian films and series in 2025. The sector is already receiving $516 million in Paul Gustavo Law funding, in a measure greenlit before Lula came into power.

Janeiro Studios tackles head-on Brazil’s biggest challenge as a film-tv power.

Directed by Oliver Stone (and co-directed by Rob Wilson), the 90-minute political portrait “Lula” covers a vast amount of historical and contemporary ground. However, despite its handful of rousing moments, the documentary — about Brazil’s current pro-worker president, Lula da Silva — comes from a limited perspective that prevents a fuller examination of the man, his myth and the people who believe in him.

The film is constantly torn between holding U.S. policy to account for decades of interference on South American governments and coming at Lula’s story primarily from a U.S. perspective. Stone, whose sit-down interview with Lula forms the movie’s narrative launchpad, is a mildly inquisitive and happily reverential on-screen interviewer — he clearly admires Lula, perhaps to a fault — but his blinkered understanding of his own subject matter shackles the movie to surface-level readings of Brazilian politics and of the various left-wing Latin American labor...

“Screen Talk: went live at the American Pavilion in Cannes this year and drew a lively crowd. Anne Thompson raved about one of the big-epic Hollywood titles playing out of competition, George Miller’s prequel “Furiosa” (Warner Bros.), starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role, which opens May 14, while both Thompson and cohost Ryan Lattanzio panned Kevin Costner’s old-fashioned three-hour Western “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter One” (Warner Bros.).

They both agree that this vanity project makes mad genius Francis Coppola’s self-funded $120 million “Megalopolis” look brilliant by comparison. Even if the Competition title is “unhinged,” at least he’s treading new ground, unlike Costner, who has spent some $100 million so far for the first two chapters of a planned four (the second part releases August 16). Coppola still awaits a North American buyer.

Both hosts admire Jacques Audiard’s Competition title “Emilia Perez,” a Spanish-language musical shot in Mexico...

Brainy political lightning rod Oliver Stone isn’t making feature films anymore. Sure, he’d love to add a 21st to his 20 films to date; he just can’t find backers. His alternate route, like many other directors today, from fellow Cannes entrant Ron Howard (“Jim Henson: Idea Man”) to Martin Scorsese, is documentaries.

Stone has churned out a career total of ten, including recent 2021 Cannes entry “JFK Revisited” (Showtime) and 2022 eco-doc “Nuclear” (Abramorama). His latest, “Lula,” marks a move to the left from his much-criticized recent portraits of dictators such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro (HBO’s “Comandante”) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (Showtime’s four-part “The Putin Interviews”).

Since his start as a filmmaker in the 1970s, the Yale-grad-turned-Vietnam-vet, now 77, has leaned into political fiction, from “Salvador,” “Wall Street,” and “W.,” to Best Director Oscar-winners “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” His last Oscar nomination came in 1996, for “Nixon,...

Those look for a libido-juicing kick at this year’s Cannes Film Festival surely found it in “Motel Destino,” the sexually explicit erotic thriller from Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz.

Competing in the main competition once again after “Invisible Life” and “Firebrand,” Aïnouz returned to his native Brazil to shoot this perverse psychosexual triangle about the owners of a sex motel along the country’s northeastern Atlantic coast, and the criminal drifter who disrupts their lives. The wild-haired Dayana (Nataly Rocha) operates the Motel Destino with her abusive husband Elias (Fábio Assunção), where she takes up an unhinged affair with Heraldo (Iago Xavier), and amid nonstop sucking and fucking, plot to kill Elias in the grand tradition of the great noirs. Except it’s a noir with a post-Hays Code, liberated twist that has rocked Cannes with its strong, pervasive sexual content, to use the language of the American Motion Picture Association’s ratings board.

Oliver Stone has always had one eye pointed south of the U.S. border.

It began with his phenomenal script for Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which transformed the famous Chicago gangster into a hardened Cuban refugee. After that, Stone directed the photojournalist saga Salvador, about the deadly civil war that gripped El Salvador in the 1980s. And later on he made a handful of documentaries about Latin American leaders, two of them featuring Fidel Castro and another one including such leftist figureheads as Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.

Stone’s fascination with the dirty politics and violent class struggles of the southern hemisphere seems to perfectly align with the dramatic twists and nonstop conspiracies present in much of his other fictional work, from J.F.K. to Nixon to W to Snowden. In the director’s world, which he argues is ours as well, leaders are either corruptible or taken down by the corrupt,...

Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, three times president of Brazil, was born in 1945. He grew up poor in Sao Paulo and left school early to help support his family. Having trained as a lathe operator, he reached a milestone when he became the first member of his family to earn more than the minimum wage. Initially reluctant to get involved in politics, he was president of the steelworkers’ union by the time he was 30, leading a strike that achieved better wages that he saw were soon soaked up by a rise in rents. “It was time for workers to think about ruling their own country,” he says in voice-over in Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson’s documentary, simply called Lula.

It is a remarkable political career, achieved against every kind of odds, recounted with admirable thoroughness. He was working in the years when most kids are in primary school; he...

While often lacking in depth, there remains a value to a documentary like Oliver Stone’s “Lula.” This is not just because of its subject, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who went from being imprisoned to holding the country’s highest office, but because of who he defeated to do so.

Jair Bolsonaro, the former president who is currently under investigation over whether he incited a failed coup after losing in 2022, is but one of the more recent sore loser right-wing authoritarians to gain power and then be rather unwilling to let it go when ultimately voted out.

Making a documentary about this upheaval of politics in Brazil, how it was that we got here and what it means for the future of the country as well as the world writ large, is a worthwhile pursuit. Stone doesn’t always get there as robustly or as comprehensively as one would hope him to,...

Oliver Stone is talking about “Lula,” his new documentary about Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which is premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, when the conversation turns to American politics. The conspiracy-minded director, who’s never seen a grassy knoll without glimpsing a second gunman on it, is drawing an analogy between Lula’s political travails, involving a corruption investigation that led to a 580-day prison stint, and those of Donald Trump. That’s when the film’s publicist interjects and politely tries to steer the topic back to the documentary. But Stone waves him off and plunges ahead.

“The charges on both sides of the Trump-Biden election are pretty wild — that Biden is corrupt and Trump is corrupt,” he says. “It’s a new form of warfare. It’s called lawfare. And that’s what they’re using against Trump. And I think there’s interesting parallels here in America,...

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival lineup was finally revealed at the sliver of dawn on Thursday, April 11. Festival director Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch unveiled this year’s crop of films across the many sections, from the Competition to Un Certain Regard, during a press conference beginning at 5 a.m. Et. See the full lineup below.

The 77th edition of Cannes comes to the Côte d’Azur May 14 through 25, and a few titles were already confirmed to be in the mix. There’s Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded epic “Megalopolis,” which has already screened for a rarified few in the United States to much awe and speculation over what distributor might take on Coppola’s experimental vision. For his first feature since 2011’s “Twixt,” Coppola gathered a cast including Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Shia Labeouf, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, and Jason Schwartzman for a sci-fi vision of a ruined NYC-like metropolis.

Oliver Stone is unveiling his long-awaited documentary “Lula” at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.

Stone filmed the documentary about thrice-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that encompasses the ruler’s incarceration between 2018 and 2019 and his return to power. Stone was in production on the feature in 2021 during which time Lula da Silva contracted Covid while filming in Cuba.

“Lula” is the latest addition to the star-studded Cannes lineup, which also includes new films from Paul Schrader, Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos, Andrea Arnold, David Cronenberg, Ali Abbasi, Sean Baker, Jia Zhangke, and Paolo Sorrentino.

Stone teased “Lula” to Jacobin earlier this year, saying that the film would be released “hopefully before the end of the year.”

“As you know, I had him in the other films with Hugo Chávez. And of course, he’s gotten a very dramatic story, with his going to jail after his second term. Now...

Cannes Film Festival has completed its 2024 Official Selection with 13 new films, including three new Competition titles.

Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious Of Cargoes, Emanuel Parvu’s Three Kilometres To The End Of The World and Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig join the Competition line-up, bringing it to 22 films.

There are four additional special screenings, including Oliver Stone’s documentary Lula, about Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Also added are Arnaud Desplechin’s Filmlovers! [pictured], Lou Ye’s An Unfinished Film and Tudor Giurgiu’s Nasty.

Un Certain Regard will open with Runar Runarsson’s When The Light Breaks,...

After announcing a whopping number of English-language films in competition, Cannes Film Festival has added some international titles: Michel Hazanavicius’ animated feature “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Variety has learned.

An auteur-driven allegorical feature, “The Most Precious of Cargoes” (first-look still below) is adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s bestselling novel of the same name, set during World War II against the backdrop of the Holocaust. It will be the first animated feature to compete in more than a decade, since Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” in 2008.

The film is co-produced and represented internationally by Studiocanal, which also has Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” in competition. “The Most Precious of Cargoes” is a passion project for Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “The Artist,” who has been developing the project for years. Hazanavicius penned the script with Grumberg and created the drawings,...

Welcome to Around the World, our summary of top digital media headlines from countries other than the United States. We’re always looking for stories that don’t get enough Stateside attention, so hit us up at tips@tubefilter.com if you have one.

TikTok has rescued its Indonesian social shopping empire (for now)

In September 2023, the Indonesian government jeopardized TikTok’s ecommerce business in one of its most lucrative markets. In hopes of protecting local businesses, the Southeast Asian nation barred financial transactions on social media, dealing a blow to local TikTok Shop vendors.

TikTok wasn’t about to give up a multi-billion-dollar market without a fight, and the ByteDance-owned app found a solution to its Indonesia problem in the form of GoTo. The most valuable startup in Indonesia will get even richer thanks to a $1.5 billion investment from TikTok. The funds will go toward a new platform...

This year, Ventana Sur has turned its spotlight on Brazil, showcasing the impactful efforts of São Paulo’s film-tv commission, Spcine, alongside Cinema do Brazil and Projeto Paradiso. In a concerted effort to signal Brazil’s resurgence after the challenging era under Jair Bolsonaro, Spcine has curated a series of panels and events to mark the country’s return to normalcy.

With President Lula da Silva back in the saddle since his stunning re-election in October 2022, confidence in Brazil as a partner in film and TV investments is awakening large expectation.

As part of its Vs agenda, Spcine will be promoting São Paulo city’s 20%-30% cash rebate for foreign shoots and international co-productions in a bid to attract new investments to São Paulo’s audiovisual sector and expand relations with international companies and institutions.

Attending the Buenos Aires confab organized by Cannes’ Festival and Marché du Film and Argentine...

London, Aug 19 (Ians) OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has a significant and systemic Left-wing bias, according to a new study.

Published in the journal ‘Public Choice’, the findings show that ChatGPT’s responses favour the Democrats in the US, the Labour Party in the UK, and President Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party in Brazil.

Concerns of an inbuilt political bias in ChatGPT have been raised previously but this is the first large scale study using a consistent, evidenced-based analysis.

“With the growing use by the public of AI-powered systems to find out facts and create new content, it is important that the output of popular platforms such as ChatGPT is as impartial as possible,” said lead author Fabio Motoki of Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

“The presence of political bias can influence user views and has potential implications for political and electoral processes.

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,...

New Delhi, May 22 (Ians) Real Madrid’s Brazilian forward, Vinncius Jr, was racially abused during his team’s defeat to Valencia in Spain’s La Liga, according to club manager Carlo Ancelotti.

The incident happened in the second half of Sunday’s match, where after a stoppage in play, an animated Vinicius Jr. pointed out a fan in the stands who he believed was abusing him.

The match was consequently suspended for 9 minutes.

He was later sent off for the first time in La Liga for his involvement in a mass altercation with Valencia player Hugo Duro.

“The stadium was shouting ‘monkey, monkey’ at him. He’s just a kid who likes to play football, he wanted to keep going, but in this situation, it’s so tough. The Var has invented an aggression that didn’t exist. He tried to free himself from an assault and he was sent off,...

Rita Lee, the legendary Brazilian musician at the forefront of the Tropicália movement as the co-founder and lead singer for Os Mutantes, died Monday, May 8. She was 75.

Lee’s family confirmed her death in a statement shared on Instagram. In 2021, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, jokingly nicknaming her tumor “Jair” after Brazil’s former, and much loathed president, Jair Bolsonaro.

In their statement, Lee’s family said the musician died at her home in São Paulo surrounded by family. As per Lee’s wishes, she will be cremated. A...

Brasilia, May 6 (Ians) Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has urged people to continue to get Covid-19 vaccines, though the Who declared the Covid-19 pandemic no longer a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.

“Despite the end of the state of emergency, the pandemic is not over yet. Take the booster doses and make sure your vaccination schedule is always complete,” Lula tweeted on Friday.

“After three years, today we can finally say we have come out of the Covid-19 health emergency. Unfortunately, over 700,000 people died from the virus in Brazil and I believe that at least half of them could have been saved,” he said.

According to data from the Health MInistry, Brazil has recorded 37.4 million Covid-19 cases with 701,494 deaths, Xinhua news agency reported.

The current government “will act to preserve lives,” the President added.

–Ians

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Films Boutique, the Berlin-based company behind “Pacifiction” and “The Burdened,” has come on board three international movies slated for the Cannes Film Festival. These include a pair of films set for Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, “Terrestrial Verses” and “The Buriti Flower,” as well as “Tiger Stripes” which will bow at Critics’ Week.

“Terrestrial Verses,” directed by Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari, is the sole Iranian film premiering in the Official Selection. The movie marks the first collaboration between these two critically acclaimed directors.

Khatami previously wrote and directed “Oblivion Verses” which won best screenplay and the Fipresci prizes at Venice in 2017. Asgari, meanwhile, previously directed “Until Tomorrow” which premiered at Berlin last year, and presented two shorts at Cannes, “More Than Two Hours” in 2013 et “Il Silenzio” in 2016.

While the plot remains under wrap, the film’s title is a reference to a poet by famed Iranian Poet Forugh Farrokhzad.

These stars have some major pull.

On Thursday, Time magazine announced its 2023 list of the World’s Most Influential People, with Jennifer Coolidge, Doja Cat, Michael B. Jordan and Disney CEO Bob Iger on the cover.

Read More: Jennifer Coolidge Recounts ‘Funniest’ Part Of Attending Makeup School: ‘I Was The Least Good’

In the world of entertainment, the list also includes Austin Butler, Aubrey Plaza, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Fielder and more.

Also on the list are athletes like Patrick Mahomes and Lionel Messi, political figures like U.S. president Joe Biden and Brazilian president Lula Da Silva, titans like Beyoncé, Elon Musk and more.

Writing about Coolidge for the issue, actress Mia Farrow says, “So many of the qualities that have made everyone fall in love with her are outside of what is mainstream or expected: her eccentric mannerisms, hilarious improvisations, and, most of all, aching vulnerability. She is uncompromisingly,...

A few months ago, on Jan. 1, more than 150 thousand people swarmed the savannah-based, landlocked city of Brasília — an unusual flock since beach cities like Rio are usually top destinations around the holidays. Yet Brazil’s capital was busy as ever, starting with its buzzy main avenue: By the Esplanada area, a massive crowd watched a series of concerts featuring dozens of artists from all over the country. Hip-hop heads with soccer jerseys stood next to old-school Tropicalia fans, couples holding babies shouted along to baile funk hits with groups of kids,...

Paris-based Loco Films has released the tense, terrifying trailer for “Property,” Brazilian director Daniel Bandeira’s survival thriller that’s set to have its world premiere Feb. 23 in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival.

Lensed by veteran cinematographer Pedro Sotero, the Dp behind Kleber Mendonça Filho’s 2019 Berlinale player “Bacurau,” “Property” follows a woman who flees her family estate in an armored car after local workers rise up to occupy it. Trapped inside the vehicle, she refuses to negotiate, prompting a collision between the competing worlds of haves and have-nots that speaks to a growing schism taking shape in societies across the globe.

Bandeira’s sophomore effort is a timely and explosive portrait of a society on the brink. “Brazil is a time bomb,” the director told Variety. “We’re running toward a point where this bomb will eventually blow up.” He added: “A reckoning is on the way.

For Brazilian director Vladimir Seixas the sun is rising anew for filmmakers in his country after the end of years of Jair Bolsonaro rule.

The helmer known for his searing investigative work on Brazil’s urban, social and cultural transformations, says that now is the time for documentary makers in his country to step forward and make the films about “the lots of stories” waiting to be told.

After four years without a culture ministry – a government department that president Bolsonaro gutted and dissolved in 2019, and which was only reinstated this year by the new Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration – Seixas says a new day is finally dawning for filmmaking in Brazil.

Seixas’ searing documentary expose “Rolê: Histórias dos Rolezinhos” provides an insider look at Brazil’s widespread and growing shopping mall protests and movement. Known as “rolezinhos” the movement crystalized between 2000 and 2020 – the social revolt a result of ongoing,...

There has been a huge tone shift for indigenous communities across Brazil since Alex Pritz completed filming his documentary, “The Territory.” This has come specifically from former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeating the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in last October’s election. “While it’s not an overtly political film, you see the effects of Bolsonaro’s policies and his political speech has on these people and how that is converted into violence really quickly,” Pritz tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts: Film Documentary panel (watch the exclusive video interview above).

Lula has made many promises to the indigenous communities of Brazil and he’s already started a new Ministry of Indigenous Affairs along with having a record number of indigenous women in the new Congress. “We’re really looking to the future and looking for ways that we can support the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau in building something better for the next generation.

The timing could hardly be more troubling. Following the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection, and just hours after copy-cat rioting in Brazil that he cheered on, Ali Alexander has been reinstated to Twitter.

Alexander is an acolyte of Roger Stone, the political dirty trickster and Trump-pardoned felon, and an ally of Trump himself. He was a key organizer of the Big-Lie-promoting “Stop the Steal” rallies in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and was instrumental in drawing massive crowds to Washington, D.C., on the day of the Jan.

On Sunday, Brazilian supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the presidential palace, the country’s seat of Congress, and various other federal buildings. The scenes, which echoed the Jan. 6 riot in the United States Capitol almost exactly two years ago, shared a similar motivation: claims of a stolen election.

Since Bolsonaro’s October loss to former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s right-wing factions have taken a leaf out of Donald Trump’s playbook and baselessly claimed foul play and election fraud. Those claims have proliferated on social media platforms like Twitter,...

U.S. President Joe Biden has condemned an “assault on democracy” in Brazil, calling the destruction and chaos that followed supporters of former President Jair Bolsanaro’s storming key state buildings “outrageous.”

Leaders around the world have united in condemnation of the shocking developments in the capital Brasilia, which are eerily similar to the scenes in Washington DC that followed after Biden defeated Donald Trump in a race to the White House two years ago.

Brazilian security forces have now regained control of Congress, the Supreme Court and Presidential Palace, according to the BBC, and Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has vowed to punish the rioters responsible for the damage with the “full force of the law.”

Bolsanaro’s supporters invaded the Brazilian state buildings on Sunday after the far-right leader was defeated by left-wing candidate Lula in a closely fought election at the end of 2022. Lula was...