Brazilian Cinema Is At Risk After Presidential Elections

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – In one of the refrigerated rooms of Armazém da Utopia, the beautiful harborside warehouse that houses the Rio Film Festival’s RioMarket, famed director Marcelo Gomes raises his hand and makes an “L” sign. The room erupts in applause. As the upcoming presidential election approached, Gomes had been sitting for more than an hour with “The Blue Trail” actor Rodrigo Santoro and Rio Film Festival director Ilda Santiago.

It was Friday morning, two days before the polls opened, and the room was packed with people carrying Lula stickers plastered on their T-shirts; bright shades of red shone against the dark gray of the walls. That’s because Brazil’s current president and campaign candidate, Lula, was parading in central Rio just a few hundred meters from the port. While hundreds of thousands of people followed the politician through the narrow streets, a few still headed towards the industry event, carrying large flags and their faces lit up with hope.

While Santiago warns the audience on stage about the importance of strong public policies as the basis of a healthy film industry, he says, “In my opinion, cinema is the greatest diplomatic tool for countries and governments to understand each other and come to the table with a different perspective.” “I see cinema as a powerful diplomatic weapon.”

The fact that one of the most important presidential elections in Brazilian history takes place during the country’s largest film festival causes a very special encounter. Brazil, one of the world’s great cinema countries, has reaffirmed its international reach and success in big fashion over the past two years: Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” won the country its first Oscar in 2025; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” brought Brazil back to the glitzy awards scene earlier this year after picking up two awards at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. This sentiment is felt at festivals and markets around the world: Brazil is on the rise. The country to bet on.

But of course, this success did not happen 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 person in the country’s history, having hosted regular screenings of Brazilian films at the presidential residence in Brasília and investing heavily in the country’s film industry during four years of Jair Bolsonaro’s government, which almost immediately did nothing to counter a court ruling that eliminated nearly all public support for cinema.

Bolsonaro’s presidency was confirmed just months before Mendonça Filho’s “Bacurau” and Karim Aïnouz’s “The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão” won awards at the Cannes Film Festival; This could take the country’s cinema to a rise similar to what we’ve seen in the last two years. The government that came shortly after brought everything to a painful and dire halt. Shortly after taking over the presidency, Bolsonaro cut the budgets of the National Agency for Cinema (ANCINE) and the Audiovisual Sector Fund (FSA) by approximately 43%. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, which further exacerbated the sectoral crisis, Bolsonaro’s government was behind an 18-month freeze on public funds for the national agency.

In response, when Lula is re-elected in 2022, he has pledged to invest R$1.6 billion ($298 million) to support national film and television production; federal funding targeted local audiovisual production to strengthen both domestic and international markets. Lula’s government focused on tax incentives and subsidies and imposed cinema quotas to encourage the exhibition of Brazilian films in national cinemas. The results are staggering: Last year, an Oxford Economics study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association found that the Brazilian audiovisual industry generates 58% more jobs than the automotive industry, creating more than 600,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Now experiencing a reality where public policies contribute to a thriving industry, local producers, filmmakers and film workers face a devastating scenario. Last night, in the toughest presidential race in Brazilian history, Lula came in second behind Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio, with the former collecting 45.16% of valid votes and the latter 47.03%.

The future of national cinema is bleak under the potential Flávio Bolsonaro presidency; the candidate has vowed to emulate nearly all of his father’s policies and tighten some of them 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 that stars “The Passion of the Christ” actor Jim Caviezel as a far-right politician.

Authorities are currently investigating approximately R$61 million ($12 million) in funds provided by Daniel Vorcaro, owner of Banco Master in Brazil, to finance the film. Leaked messages show Flávio Bolsonaro negotiating direct payments with Vorcaro to finance the bloated project. Vorcaro is currently in prison, accused of multimillion-dollar financial fraud. He was detained in early March after a judge found “strong indications” he was trying to bribe a former central bank governor.

Films shown at this year’s edition of the Rio Film Festival attempted to grasp the dire effects of the first Bolsonaro administration. Miguel Antunes Ramos “Dragons” is a depiction of the images that shaped Jair Bolsonaro’s political mythos from his early days on YouTube until the end of his term. João Paulo Cuenca’s “144 – Not the Apocalypse” follows the director on a massive road trip across the country after he posted a satirical tweet about the former president that resulted in 144 lawsuits and hundreds of thousands of death threats from the far-right movement within the Evangelical church. Dandara Ferreira’s “Anatomy of Chaos” offers unprecedented access to the Brazilian Senate to chronicle the high-profile congressional investigation into the federal government’s management and negligence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When they were scheduled to play in Rio, they were seen as the epitome of a treacherous past that the country was ready to move away from. Now they feel a keen sense of foreboding when they first meet the audience.

The day before the elections, Aïnouz announced that he was voting for Lula when he took the stage to present “Pruning the Rose Bush” at the Rio Film Festival. At the end of his speech, the Brazilian director launched into a pro-Lula chant and talked about the key role of public policies in developing his lauded career. As Armazém walked through the halls of Utopia before the polls opened, there was still a hopeful feeling. But on Monday morning, a visible veil of grief and gloom replaced the previous brightness.

“The possibility of the same group that ruled the country between 2019 and 2022 returning to power is a disaster,” says veteran producer Paula Cosenza, president of Trema record label. Diversity. “The far-right candidate becomes a concrete threat to democracy by questioning the legitimacy of artistic creation, academic knowledge, science and the free use of the press. Previous experience has bequeathed the complete paralysis of the audiovisual sector, cuts in public universities and research funding, and more than 700,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in the pandemic. Cultural public policies should be state policies, but in Brazil they appear to be government policies.”

Gomes echoed this sentiment, adding that the national audiovisual industry “is of great economic importance for Brazil.” “It is a sector that is internationally recognized and has been deemed worthy of many major awards in recent years. Transforming into a government that does not value culture could put all of this at risk.”

Ricardo Alves Jr., whose “The French Teacher” premiered to critical acclaim in San Sebastián and is now playing in Rio, says he was “saddened” when he realized how close the thriller’s quasi-dystopian, conservative reality came to real life in his home country. “Last night can only be seen as a horror movie, tracking the far right’s advances in Congress, the Senate and state governments,” he says.

“Lula’s election in the second round is essential to create a barrier against the complete destruction of acquired rights, whether in education, human rights or culture,” he adds. “The project presented by the far right is complete destruction. Something worse is coming than 2018, when artistic production was seriously attacked.”

It is very touching to be writing this report from Armazém da Utopia, which literally translates as Utopia Warehouse. As Brazil heads towards a tense second round in the polls that determines the future, the market is fueling itself with hope, where eyes turn to what is still possible, the still-living dream of a thriving industry.