Tense Presidential Elections, a Focus on Domestic Audiences and Oscars Closer Than Ever: 10 Takeaways From the Rio Film Festival

This year's Rio Film Festival was marked by historic presidential elections and a promising crop of Brazilian filmmakers and co-production focused producers

By Rafa Sales Ross

Rafa Sales Ross

Guest Contributor

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Hosting a film festival during historic presidential elections destined to shape an entire country’s future is a hefty ask, but this year’s Rio Film Festival managed to carefully and purposefully thread the lines between focusing on the cinema and the industry of today and not turning a blind eye to the issues of tomorrow.

This year’s edition, which ran Oct. 1-11, was bookended by two buzzy queer films in Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra” and Jordan Firstman’s “Club Kid,” and introduced audiences to a promising crop of Brazilian cinema. Major national titles at the festival included Gabriel Martins’s Toronto-selected “On Behalf of My Son,” Allan Deberton’s Oscar hopeful “Gugu’s World,” Enock Carvalho and Mateus Farias’s Locarno-winning “The Riverbank,” and Venice Queer Lion winner “London,” by Victor di Marco and Márcio Picoli.

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