Brazilian Cinema

Brazilian cinema’s defining movement, Cinema Novo, emerged in the early 1960s with an explicitly political programme: films about hunger, drought and inequality, made cheaply and deliberately rejecting the polish of imported cinema. Its influence on political filmmaking across Latin America and Africa was substantial.

After dictatorship and a near-collapse of production, the industry was rebuilt through the 1990s with state incentives.

Contemporary Brazilian film is strongly associated with the urban periphery (the favela as setting and subject) but also produces documentary, comedy and intimate drama that reach large domestic audiences without international attention.