Rio Fest Prizes ‘Baby,’ ‘Malu,’ Reconnects With the International Film Community

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – South America’s largest festival, the Rio International Film Festival, wrapped Sunday, Oct. 13, consolidating its position as the main venue for Brazilian pics’ premieres and an important gathering of filmmakers from around the world.

Following a combination of an unsupportive government, a recession and the pandemic, Rio Fest resurged last year and expanded this year, screening about 270 pics.

“For the first time in years, we were able to invite this year international guests to attend our festival, some 50 filmmakers from different countries”, Rio Fest’s director Ilda Santiago told Variety. “We back on track.

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Rio Fest’s Premiere Brasil, which included 90 features and short films, was once again the main showcase of local pics. Two features shared  Redentor kudos for fiction film.

Marcelo Caetano’s “Baby,” a co-production between Brazil, France and the Netherlands, is centered on male prostitution in Sao Paulo. Joao Pedro Mariano received the actor kudo for this performance in the pic. Cup Filmes, Desbun Filmes and Plateau Producoes produce.

Pedro Freire’s “Malu” is about a woman facing a middle-age crisis. Yara de Novaes nabbed the Redentor kudo for actress. The pic’s production companies are Bubbles Project, headed by producer Tatiana Leite, and TVZero. Pedro Freire also scooped best screenplay.

Acclaimed helmer Sergio Machado’s “3 Obas de Xango” received the doc kudo for his portrait of the work from three of Brazil’s top artists: writer Jorge Amado, musician Dorival Caymmi and painter and sculptor Carybe. The doc is produced by Coqueirao Pictures, headed by emerging producer Diogo Dahl.

Luciano Vidigal nabbed best director for “Kasa Branca,” which is about a young man in an impoverished Rio community who battles for his grandma to enjoy her last days on earth. 

Fest Rio 2024 featured a number of productions connected to the U.S. Brazilian doc helmer Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics” had its Latin American premiere in the fest. The doc explores the growing influence of religious fundamentalist leaders in Brazilian politics. U.S. private investors Impact Partners, Play/Action Pictures and Luminate, in association with Plan B/KM Films, funded the production. Costa’s doc “The Edge of Democracy” scored an Academy Award nomination in 2020.

“Both the ‘The Edge of Democracy’ and ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’ relates to the U.S. politics. I believe that is why I managed to raise funding for them in the United States, which is usually very difficult for Brazilian filmmakers,” Costa told Variety.

Pedro Kos, a L.A.-based Brazilian helmer, attended Fest Rio for the Latin American premieres of his two new pics.

Doc “The White House Effect,” which he co-directed with Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, assembled entirely from archival footage, is about the US policy on climate change. “In Our Blood” is a fictional horror movie about a filmmaker who reunites with her estranged mother for a documentary.

“I see myself as a Brazilian person, but I’m well adapted to the United States,” Kos told Variety. “I can see the reality from these two different perspectives, and connecting these two worlds motivates me.”

Marcos Tellechea, of Reagent Media, is a Brazilian producer who has carved out a career in the U.S. Reagent and 20th Century Fox co-produced Paxton Winters’ “Pacified,” set is Rio and released in 2019. Another Reagent international co-production, Justin Anderson’s “Swimming Home,” had its Latin American premiere in Rio Fest 2024.

RioMarket, the fest’s market, featured seminars, business rounds and workshops. One of the highlights was Serial Bridges Rio 2024, a workshop held by France-based Series Mania Institute. Brazilian series producers and showrunners participated in a one-week long training program with European mentors, such as Eszter Angyalosy.

Series Mania Institute’s director Pierre Ziemniak told Variety that the workshop’s goal is to connect Brazilian series makers to the European markets. The first edition of Serial Bridges Rio, held last year in RioMarket, was so successful that Series Mania Institute organized similar workshops in Taiwan and Turkey, he said.