Fantastic:Brasil Debuts at Rio Film Festival, Names Winners — SkimNews
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- Fantastic:Brasil debuted at the 2025 Rio Film Festival (Oct 2-7) at Armazém da Utopia as a new industry platform uniting the Fantastic Pavilion Cannes, Rio Market, Mórbido Film Fest, Sitges, FICCI Industria, #LINK, and Sanfic Industry Chile.
- Pablo Guisa Koestinger, founder of Mórbido Film Fest and executive director of the Fantastic Pavilion at the Marché du Film, framed the initiative as solving the genre's core problem — not talent, but circulation — saying a project developed in Rio should be able to find partners in Colombia, Santiago, Mexico, Berlin, Cannes, and Abu Dhabi.
- The initiative launched three calls — WomanInFan Brasil (Brazilian women directors), Monstra – Fantastic Queer Lab (queer genre from across Latin America, presented with Mórbido's #LGBTerror), and #LINK Vertical (vertical 9:16 format) — each featuring four to six projects in development labs and pitch sessions.
- Lucas Procópio Caetano's "Entranhas," in which a drag queen recounts three stories to a bound, gagged victim, won the Fantastic Round Robin Award at the Marché du Film and teaser post-production from Mística; Caetano co-wrote "Brazilian Horror Cinema in the 21st Century."
- Antonia Baudouin Andrade's "Chupacu" — about "agro-machos" menaced by a butt-attacking alien during a testosterone-fueled barbecue — won the Mórbido Lab at SANFIC; her credits include writers' rooms at Amazon, Netflix, Star+, and Warner.
- Selected projects gain a defined international route through the Fantastic Pavilion at Cannes' Marché du Film, the Fantastic Embassy at Berlin's EFM, FICCI in Cartagena de Indias, and Mórbido in Mexico City.
Why it matters: For Latin American genre filmmakers — particularly women and queer directors who dominate the first slate — Fantastic:Brasil converts a one-off pitch session into a structured pipeline from Rio to Cannes, Berlin, and Cartagena. With roughly 12 to 18 projects advancing simultaneously through the first edition, the initiative materially expands each title's festival and commercial reach beyond national borders rather than relying on ad-hoc submissions.
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