What Comes Next for Brazil After ‘I’m Still Here’ and ‘The Secret Agent’? International Co-Productions Point Towards a Strong Future — SkimNews
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- Walter Salles won Brazil's first Portuguese-language Best International Film Oscar in 2025 with "I'm Still Here," followed weeks later by Kleber Mendonça Filho's "The Secret Agent" taking two Cannes prizes and five Oscar nominations including Best Picture.
- Brazil's 2026 festival presence at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice came entirely through co-productions—including first-ever partnerships with Nepal and Finland—since no primarily domestic production made competition slots.
- Brazilian co-production requests jumped from 56 in 2023 to 140 in 2025 (a 150% increase), with the country part of 242 international co-productions between 2015 and 2024, or 10.4% of all Brazilian films.
- Rio Film Festival director Ilda Santiago created a dedicated strand to showcase international co-productions, noting that films now commonly involve four or more production countries balancing funds and creative vision.
- The Audiovisual Sector Fund (ASF), Brazil's primary film financing system managed by ANCINE, underwrites co-productions through open calls—but producer Cibele Amaral said the last co-production open call was in 2023.
- An Oxford Economics study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association found Brazil's audiovisual industry generated over 600,000 direct and indirect jobs—58% more than the country's automotive industry.
Why it matters: Brazil's 150% surge in co-production requests from 2023 to 2025 shows global buyers are actively seeking out Brazilian crews, lower production costs, and public financing—but producer Cibele Amaral and Patrick de Jongh both warned that policy discontinuity, including a co-production open call gap dating to 2023, is the single factor capping further growth just as international demand peaks.
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