Discover Movies

Paula, Beatriz, Giu and Fernando live in one of the poorest favelas of São Paulo. A world of marginalization and despair, in which they struggle for their rights as transgenders, but also for survival: according to the statistics from the Transgender Europe NGO, Brazil is the nation with the highest number of murders of transgender people each year. The choice to experience your body in complete freedom is a revolutionary concept and highly risky in this context. It is an affirmation of one's being. it is no coincidence that one of them, who has begun the transition phase writes in his diary: "Each hormone pill is a declaration of ownership of my body. After each pill, I feel much better in my own skin". This movie shows their daily life, their struggles and protests in a world where ignorance becomes oppression and hate: in a word transphobia.

Carlos Reichenbach talks to Eugenio Puppo about some of his shorts films "Esta Rua Tão Augusta", "Sangue Corsário" e "M da Minha Mão" and specially the film "Lilian M: Relatório Confidencial". Explaining production details and revealing internal informations the film is a reconstitution about Reichenbach's works whitin turmoil moments of the country and his own career.

In the documentary, the singer Maria Rita talks about her professional career, music, and life.

Dive into the inventive universe of Tom Zé. Through intimate interviews with artists, family members and longtime collaborators, the film retraces the singular trajectory of one of Brazil's most original musical minds. The documentary brings together voices that reflect on his boundless creative unpredictability, highlight the technical mastery behind his sonic experiments and portray his music as the result of an expansive creative process, where ideas unfold like "pills of sound".

Reporter Joaquim de Carvalho reconstructs the 580 days of Lula's unjust imprisonment, with exclusive testimonials from those who closely followed the former president's day-to-day life from the concentration at the ABC Metallurgical Union, the presentation to the Federal Police, the flight to Curitiba, prison until release. Documentary shows unprecedented backstage. The direction is by Joaquim de Carvalho and Patri Salgado, with images by Eric Monteiro and photography by Ricardo Stuckert and Vigília Lula Livre.

The short film reports the process of rescuing and finishing A Praga, by José Mojica Marins, o Zé do Caixão. Produced in 1980, the film was never completed and was lost.

It would be a swan, it would be a heron; white magic evil eyes.

In a bus trip, thoughts, dreams and memories mix together as the day dawns

The documentary offers an overview of the district of Cidade Tiradentes and its inhabitants. It starts by the acquisition of land by the public authorities from the 1970s onwards, to the occupation of what is today one of the largest housing projects in Latin America.

Old Zé Cristino, riding his donkey, goes to Congonhas do Campo to fulfill a promise to São Bom Jesus do Matozinho. In front of the church, he admires the Sanctuary with its 12 prophets, a monumental work by Antonio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho. Each prophet is shown in detail with the biblical text accompanying the images.

Thammy is Dereck’s mother. Bruna, Chiva, and Ana too. Together they raise their child. Together they make music and together they build their own house.

The documentary seeks to understand, through its characters’ testimonies and meaningful events, how Rio de Janeiro’s military police became a demoralized, violent and corrupt institution. Without denying the police’s importance, but aware of the difference between restraint and police brutality, the movie will relive the biggest events from the last decades in which those who tried to bring the military police closer to the law collided with those who transformed it into a feared symbol of urban violence.

Documentary about popular art manifestations in Northeast Brazil: the "cordel" literature (popular literature, small stories sold in markets); "repente", kind of musical challenge between two singers, who have to improvise the verses, in strict rhyme; and the interaction between these and local popular song.

Memory has drawers that hide our past, but fear and longing prevent us from accessing them.

The Miringuava dam is being built to ensure public water supply around the municipality of São José dos Pinhais, Brazil. Changes are inevitable, and many residents of the surrounding area suffer from the conditions imposed by the Government's project.

The São Francisco River crosses the Brazilian hinterland, lands marked by extreme aridity. This great river that was once impetuous and generous is now very fragile. Deforestation of its margins and overexploitation of land by intensive agriculture endanger the great diversity of its ecosystem. The lives of riverside dwellers are affected in its deepest integrity, as well as their areas. The São Francisco River is the vital flow of their existence and the central place of their hopes and imagination, but the general feeling is that if the river dies, everything will disappear with it. Women are at the forefront of resistance. They struggle daily to allow for the possibility of a future. Their children also claim this identity, which it is up to them to renew and make fruitful.

A biography of the Portuguese-born Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.

The man who changed the history of a club. Marcelo Bielsa became the hero of Leeds' unlikely return to the top flight after 16 years. It took hope for a crowd, joy for a city. Many already call him God in the north of England. From simple lifestyle to dedication to common football. From the renovation of all Training Center facilities to the transformation of ordinary players into national team athletes. Funny cases and emotional reports of people who had their lives impacted by the Argentine coach.

A surveyor maps landslide risk areas in the city of Ubatuba, in a hillside region of the Atlantic Forest. Obsessed with measuring and organizing, he encounters a landscape of chaotic human occupation and ongoing conflicts. The city’s history crosses his path, and through his theodolite, he begins to see images of the past.

In its narrow and winding streets, there are still churches, the old and rich houses in ruins and the houses of the poor, recalling the lavish past of the city of Laranjeiras, in Sergipe.

The life and work of Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) are portrayed in this documentary. The film presents his ideas and memories in a succession of sensory landscapes on the painter, sculptor and landscaper’s trajectory: Burle Marx projected squares and gardens in cities like Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and Recife —most of them is marked by native plants of Brazil, that, together, make up wavy shapes.

For this behemoth, Bressane took his opera omnia and edited it in an order that first adheres to historical chronology but soon starts to move backwards and forward. The various pasts – the 60s, the 80s, the 2000s – comment on each other in a way that sheds light on Bressane’s themes and obsessions, which become increasingly apparent and finally, a whole idea of cinema reveals itself to the curious and patient viewer. Will Bressane, from now on, rework The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus when he makes another film? Is this his latest beginning? Why not, for the eternally young master maverick seems to embark on a maiden voyage with each and every new film!

"Celso: a portrait, a place" is a documentary that emerges from a year of sporadic visits by the documentary filmmaker (until then a convinced agnostic) to the Capuchin complex, a block that is, among other things, a place to preserve the memory of the Capuchin friars in the Serra Gaúcha, southern Brazil. The daily life of the space and the ramblings of the charismatic friar and artist Celso Bordignon are interspersed in an attempt to contemplate aspects of religious life, art, and the awareness of the nuances of the action of time on matter, body and spirit.

Presidential elections. Fake news. Pleasures and pains through the neighborhoods of the city. Brazil, 21st century.

Captures the tenacity and diversity of Angolan society. Beginning with a brief history of Angola's war for independence from Portugal, the documentary's up-beat pacing provides an engaging overview of Angola's social and economic landscape. City life, music, the economy, rural communities, and the effects of civil war and apartheid in neighboring South Africa are covered using scenes of every day life in Angola and commentaries from Angolans themselves.

Documentary and staged scenes mix in this very personal story of a family in the suburbs of Rio, through the memories of a backyard, a giant tree, and the woman who planted it.

At the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of refugees fleeing droughts took shelter in Natal, but in the provincial capital they were met with yet another problem: the smallpox epidemic.

The changes in Brazilian money bills and how these changes affected the economy and society.

The story follows important moments in the life of Angenor de Oliveira, known as Cartola. From his childhood in middle-class neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro to his move to Morro da Mangueira, passing through his complicated family relationships and his first compositions.

PLURAL is a journey through the intricate construction of identity. Guilherme Terreri and Rita Von Hunty unfold to explore the fluid boundaries of the integral self and human expression.

Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho's thinking, presented through his presence, his daily work routine and his family life in Virginia (USA).

A visual accompaniment to Tōru Takemitsu's sonically sparse composition 'Corona for Pianist(s)'. Taking inspiration from the graphic score that interprets notes as circles and dots, the film focuses on the micro, elemental and sensual. Light flickering on water, the patterns of landscape, the movement of hands: here time is slowed and a great sense of focus is thrust upon us.

Samba, Popping, and Jazz. Through these dance styles and documentary interviews, Bodies That Tell Stories seeks to discuss the standardization and whitening of dances that had their roots in Black people.

A traveler and a narrator in the post-apocalypse; they narrate an abandoned city as we arrive at a destroyed landscape and understand what happened to this small city.

Filmmaker Paula Gaitán and Richard Peña, a professor at Columbia University and former director of film programming at Lincoln Center, delve into the manifestos of Glauber Rocha, revisiting the Aesthetics of Hunger and the Aesthetics of Dreams to reflect on the revolutionary power of cinema.

As the international press pours into Havana, Cuba to report on the death of Fidel Castro, a little girl proudly holds a large cardboard sign over her head on the Plaza de la Revolución. In a fascinating shot lasting almost 12 minutes, we watch this girl-braids, red dress, white knee socks, fighting against the wind-as she experiences her moment in the spotlight. We can't see what's written on the sign because she's being filmed from behind. Armed with cameras and cell phones, the people around her are taking countless photos and uninvited selfies with her. As the minutes tick by, our unease grows. Placed in the role of an ignorant spectator, we have time to contemplate the omnipresence of the camera-and we become desperate to know what's written on that sign.

Professor Singer can be assessed as an enlightenment: he was also an educator, even (or above all) when he made politics. A major character in the intellectual life of São Paulo in the last seventy years, he narrates his trajectory, from his arrival in Brazil in 1940, escaping the Second World War, in 2016, in the leadership of solidarity economy movements. The film tries to show the beauty of a man thinking.

"People on the street will not end in anything." How many times have you heard this phrase? Even so, at each protest, you took to the streets, invited people, mobilized. Why? What was the strange stubbornness that made you strive without the slightest idea if it would work? This is the story we want to tell. Not only MBL's history, but yours. You saw, lived and won. And now you can remember how it all started…