Léa Garcia

Young lovers Orfeu and Eurydice run through the favelas of Rio during Carnaval, on the lam from a hitman dressed like Death and Orfeu's vengeful fiancée Mira and passing between moments of fantasy and stark reality. This impressionistic retelling of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice introduced bossa nova to the world with its soundtrack by young Brazilian composers Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

For Lete, only excess can bring back the memories she does not want to forget. But if you take away the illusion of a person, only emptiness remains.

The 43rd edition screens Neighbors, with five segments about the theme “neighbors”: not only about physical proximity, but also about relationships. In Brazil, Olga is a 90-year-old black woman who lost her husband one year ago; her neighbors, who come from different parts of the world, interrupt her grief. In Russia, an employee tries so hard to please his boss that he becomes inconvenient. An Indian woman, with the help of her male friend, decides to learn how to drive, an uncommon practice for women in the country. In China, an elderly, owner of an old and decadent barbershop, argues with his son, who wants to change the business. In South Africa, a group of homeless fights for the right to housing.

In Brazil, a diamond prospector sets out in pursuit of a thief who has robbed him and left him for dead. Along the way, he meets one of his adversary's former mistresses and tries to extract some information from her.

With his mom's salon on the brink of bankruptcy, a dedicated son rolls up his sleeves to help and discovers himself as the coolest barber on the block.

"A Day with Jerusa" follows Silvia, a young, mediumic market researcher facing the hardships of underemployment while awaiting the result of a public exam, and Jerusa, a gracious 77-year-old lady, eyewitness to the daily life on Bixiga, a neighborhood filled with ancestral memories. On Jerusa's birthday, while she waits for her family's arrival, the encounter between her deepest memories and Silvia's mediumship allows them to travel through time and realities common to their ancestry.

Marina is in her late thirties and has recently become a widow. After finding an old photo album from her fifteenth birthday, she becomes curious about the men she danced with that night and decides to track them down, one by one.

In a Brazilian coastal village where everything seems motionless, Clarice grasps her life in a single day, unlike those she meets and who are living this day like any other. She tries to understand her obscure reality and the destiny of the people around her in a circular time that haunts and disorients.

Quilombo dos Palmares was a real-life democratic society, created in Brazil in the 17th century. This incredibly elaborate (and surprisingly little-known) film traces the origins of Quilombo, which began as a community of freed slaves. The colony becomes a safe harbor for other outcasts of the world, including Indians and Jews. Ganga Zumba (Toni Tornado) becomes president of Quilombo, the first freely elected leader in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, the ruling Portuguese want to subjugate Zumba and his followers, but the Quilombians are ready for their would-be oppressors. The end of this Brave New World is not pleasant, but the followers of Zumba and his ideals take to the hills, where they honor his memory to this day. Writer/director Carlos Diegues takes every available opportunity to compare the rise and fall of Quilombo with the state of affairs in modern-day Brazil.

Juca, a black kid, sees his friends and his mother being hit by his stepfather, without being able to do anything against it, but when he knows that he is the great-grandson of João Cândido, the leader of the sailors rebellion against the chibata hits adopted by Brazilian Navy till 1910, he takes an extreme attitude towards changing the course of his life.

When Maurício becomes a student at a top medical school, he becomes obsessed with a mystery linked to the dead bodies used for dissection.

Antônio is an astrophysicist who has just found out he has an inoperable brain tumor. After decades living in the United States, he returns to Brazil and tries to learn more about his biological mother. His quest sends him off into the slums of Rio de Janeiro.

In a small town in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, two sisters meet again after years apart.

When Daniela, a famous actress, decides to return to her hometown to reconnect with a simpler lifestyle, local politicians decide to exploit her influence in order to get ambiguous deeds done.

An illiterate lady seeks to soothe the missing of her son asking for a friend to read several times the same unique and old letter sent by her son ten years ago. Through these readings , a great friendship and complicity were born between them.

What does Brazilian cinema tell us? What does Brazilian cinema tell us about black actresses and actors? ‘Pressed, Ripped Apart’ makes use of archival sources to retrieve the trajectory of black actresses and actors who, between absences and delimited presences, between the fallacy of a racial democracy – based on the harmony among Brazil’s diverse identities – and erasure of identity, strain the history of Brazilian audiovisual and above all, our own history.

Bixiga, heart of São Paulo. Jerusa, a resident of a house aged by time, on a special day, receives Silvia, an opinion pollster who circulates the neighborhood convincing people to answer questionnaires for a washing powder survey. The moment she meets Silvia, Jerusa provides her with an unusual afternoon full of memories, inviting her to share moments of happiness with an "unknown person".

Jorge de Oliveira is an Afro-Brazilian poet who works in a publicity agency in São Paulo. Torn between his rich white lovers and his black family and friends, Jorge's situation serves as a springboard to a discussion about racial issues in Brazil.

Human cloning. The Islamic world. Two young people, two different cultures, two different beliefs. An impossible love story that not even time could erase. During a trip to Morocco, Lucas has a forbidden romance with Jade. He returns to Brazil after the death of his twin brother Diogo. A close family friend, scientist Albieri uses this situation to produce the first human clone using cells taken from Lucas. Twenty years later, Jade, Lucas and his clone form an odd love triangle.

Amidst an unresolved crime, Simone protects Cristiano and falls in love with him. However, the couple faces ambition and betrayals that tear them apart. Presumed dead, she returns under a new identity seeking revenge.

Ambitious Nice seeks social advancement through Rodrigo Medeiros, but ends up truly falling in love with him. This is the second version of the telenovela, originally aired in 1976.

Waldomiro Cerqueira is a powerful businessman who built his empire exploiting mineral deposits and suddenly finds himself under threat of losing it due to family conflicts.

Patricia, an orphan living in a traveling amusement park, believes the stars will bring her happiness. One day, an astrologer predicts the impossible: the young woman, an Aquarius, will fall in love with a Pisces boy, a sign initially incompatible with hers. The girl does, in fact, become enchanted by the wealthy student Renato, but he doesn't feel the same way. Patricia travels to Rio de Janeiro, where she befriends a gentleman whom she affectionately calls Mr. Pepe, unaware that he is Renato's great-uncle and the owner of the company where she begins working. Mr. Pepe discovers fraudulent activities committed by his family and decides to fake his death to observe the dispute over his inheritance.

Set in 19th-century Brazil during the waning years of slavery, Escrava Isaura tells the story of Isaura, a white-skinned enslaved woman raised with the manners and education of a noble lady. Though treated with affection by her mistress, Isaura remains legally enslaved and becomes the object of obsessive desire by Leôncio Almeida, the cruel heir to the plantation. After the death of her protector, Isaura falls under Leôncio’s control. Despite his attempts to seduce and dominate her, she resists, determined to preserve her dignity and freedom. Her father, Miguel, helps her escape to Recife, where she adopts a new identity and meets Álvaro, a wealthy and principled abolitionist who falls in love with her. Leôncio eventually tracks her down, leading to dramatic confrontations. In the end, Álvaro rescues Isaura by purchasing Leôncio’s debts, securing her freedom and affirming the story’s central themes of justice, love, and resistance against oppression.

The plot takes place in a fictional city called Vale do Café, where two powerful families, the Toledo and Fontes, are locked in an intense dispute for power and land ownership. Conflicts are marked by betrayals, forbidden loves and dark secrets. The soap opera addresses themes such as ambition, revenge, romance and conflicts between families, showing the fire that consumes the land and human relationships.

The cunning Senator Petrônio Paranhos gives an interview to the beautiful journalist Magali Santanna, who is interested only in his affair with Arlete—an ambitious young woman intent on conceiving the older man's child via in vitro fertilization. To land this scoop, Magali agreed to interview the politician in a motel room, a condition he had insisted upon. However, Paranhos suffers a sudden collapse and dies during the interview. Detective Aristênio Catanduva, who had been keeping the senator under surveillance, investigates the case. Known by the codename "Araponga," he is a bumbling figure working for the Federal Police following his long service to the military regime.

Marina is raised by her father on an island after her mother's death. As a teenager, she moves to Rio de Janeiro to study and live with her godparents, where she ends up falling in love with Marcelo.

At her birthday party, a little girl disappears and her family is left desperate. Years later, their hope returns in the form of a seaside young woman.

In the backlands, the drover Ricardo marks the destiny of young Maria. Years later, in Xique-Xique, a mistake between two identical women rekindles passions, separations, and an impossible love.

Antônio is on his deathbed after helping a Black man escape his own father's plantation. Before dying, Antônio asks his father, Judge Queiroz Antunes, to raise the young enslaved boy, Bento, as his own son.

On Paquetá Island, Carolina dreams of reuniting with a childhood sweetheart, unaware that it's Augusto, her brother's friend. After adventures and misunderstandings, the couple struggles to stay together.

Mikhael is a sergeant in charge of BOPE, always on dangerous missions in Rio de Janeiro. But after getting involved in a controversial operation that culminated to a slaughter, he is transferred to a police unit at the state countryside.