A City Breathing Again Through Its Art

There is a particular disorientation that comes from stepping out of a darkened theater, a world of projected light and structured sound, and back into the humid embrace of a city at night. The story still clings to you, a phantom limb, while the tangible world of traffic and conversation reasserts its claim.

For a moment, you are two people: the one who just lived a life on screen, and the one who must now find their way home. This brief, sacred confusion seemed to settle over an entire city, as the Rio International Film Festival concluded its most recent gathering, leaving in its wake the afterglow of a hundred different stories.

A Confluence of Stories

This year was, by the measure of numbers, a triumph.

A record broken for Brazilian films. A return of the public in force. One hundred and fifty thousand moviegoers. But a number is a cold thing, and what it represents is the warm, living reality of countless shared moments in the dark. It is the collective gasp during the festival opener, “After the Hunt,” and the quiet, unified exhale at the close of “Hamnet.” It is the sight of young people, perhaps accustomed to the solitary glow of smaller screens, discovering the profound communion of the cinema.

The festival’s executive director, Ilda Santiago, called it a celebration, and it was precisely that—not a formal, prescribed ceremony, but a sprawling, joyous affirmation that the desire to gather and watch a story unfold is a deep and persistent human need. Rio, she said, is back in full fledge. A city, breathing again through its art.

The Weight of an Encounter

Then there is the beautiful strangeness of an arrival.

The announcement that the American director Spike Lee would land in Rio to present a special screening of “Highest 2 Lowest” felt like more than a matter of logistics or programming. It was an invitation for a particular kind of collision. Here was a filmmaker whose vision is so thoroughly steeped in the bricks and rhythms of Brooklyn, a cinematic language forged in the specific energies of New York City. And here was Rio de Janeiro, a place with its own potent and inimitable creative pulse.

To bring these two forces into the same room, as RioFilme president Leonardo Edde noted, is to promote an encounter. It is a gesture that acknowledges that a city's story is not a monologue, but a conversation. It is an exchange, a way of saying, we will show you ours if you will show us yours. The slot he was given was the same one held the previous year by Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” a film freighted with Brazilian history, which only deepens the sense of a dialogue between distinct and powerful cinematic traditions.

The Gentle Machinery of Creation

Beneath the glamour of the premieres and the galas runs a quieter, more intricate current: the business of making more art possible.

The RioMarket, the festival’s industry counterpart, is where the architecture of future films is drafted. Here, conversations turn to the pressing, practical matters of co-production, of finding partners across national and cultural lines. There is a certain wonder in the idea of it—the discussions about positioning Brazil as a place for international shoots, or the masterclasses where wisdom is passed from one generation to the next.

The event also marked the France-Brazil Season 2025, a celebration of 200 years of diplomatic relations. It is a peculiar and lovely thought, that two centuries of formal history between nations can find expression in a reciprocal cultural exchange, in the shared effort to bring a new film into the world. In the midst of this, a deal is struck.

Best Friend Forever lands world sales. Gebeka, a French company, nabs the rights for 'Papaya,' an animated film supervised by the Oscar-nominated Alê Abreu. A story about a fruit will travel from Brazil to France, a small, tangible piece of evidence that these grand encounters and quiet meetings can bear the most unique and unexpected fruit.