Brazilian Documentary Movies

The film gets into the underworld of crimes involving homophobia, soccer organized fans, and gangs in Sao Paulo city. It shows the team’s work routine of DECRADI, the only unit specialized in this field, as they search for people who have made hate speech into cruel murders.

Three times a memory.

The directors take five old VHS tapes documenting the Ãwas customs back to the tribe.

Develops from the life, work and memory of Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, one of the most important names in the history of Brazilian theater, to examine the courses of dramaturgy and politics in the last decades. Guarnieri, besides being a TV star, was also seen as the synthesis of the politically engaged artist in Brazil. His sons, also actors, saw a separation between art, work, and politics. As he investigates the portraits of two generations, grandson and director Francisco aims to understand the place of his own generation in history, in art and the world as a whole.

Indigenous chief Juma Xipaia fights to protect tribal lands despite assassination attempts. Her struggle intensifies after learning she's pregnant, while her husband, Special Forces ranger Hugo Loss, stands by her side.

The lives of Luhli and Lucina, two especially important artists in the alternative cultural scene during the 1970s. In a time when transgression, love and peace guided behavior, we discover the love of two women for art, their spiritual universe, their lives in community and their three-way relationship with photographer Luiz Fernando Borges da Fonseca.

A documentary about the history of the anarchist-led workers' movement in Brazil. It shows the transformation of immigrants into the first urban workers and chronicles the most important strikes, the successes and defeats of the movement, from the end of the 19th century until 1922.

The trajectory of Branca, a 3 years old Brazilian, and Marcos. They never met in life before seeing themselves on screen. Branca travels to Cuba, her father homeland, in the anniversary of the revolution.

At a time when the world is discussing the impact of human actions on the environment, Amazônia Eterna presents a critical analysis of how the world's largest tropical rainforest is understood and appreciated.

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

Seven adolescents take on the mission of filming, for one week, their family's housemaids and hand over the footage to the director to make a film. The images that confront us uncover the complex relationship that exists between housemaids and their employers, a relationship that confuses intimacy and power in the workplace and provides us with an insight into the echoes of a colonial past that linger in contemporary Brazil.

Ivan is a young Brazilian delinquent going through a probationary programme. An electronic shackle controls his location, but not his thoughts. Documentary about a man on home prison.

In 1968, Orlando Lovecchio was made victim of a guerilla's bomb terrorist attack, which main objective was to fight against the Military Regime. Orlando lost one leg after the world-reckoned attack against the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo.

An albino boy named Sanã lives on the island of Lençóis, an untouched paradise in northeastern Maranhão state. Surrounded by dunes, he is mimicked in a very white landscape, under a scalding sun from which he cannot escape. In this microcosm ruled by wind and the tides, Sanã builds his own private world.

Waving the flag that states every film is political, Vincent Carelli visibilizes in this documentary the cause of the Guarani-Kaiowá: a group of indigenous people that fear their lands, located in the Mato Grosso do Sul, will be confiscated by the State. A territorial conflict born more than one hundred years ago, during the Paraguay war. While fighting against the Brazilian Congress in order not to be evicted from their homes, the 50.000 indigenous people demand the demarcation of the space that belongs to them. With some rigorous investigative work, the Brazilian director tells with his own voice of the social and political injustices suffered by the Guarani people through material he filmed over the course of more than forty years. The archive images, both color and black and white, reveal the crudeness with which they coexist every day: among the violation of their civil rights and the guts with which they confront the usurpers.

Documentary about samba musician from Bahia Clementino Rodrigues, aka Riachão.

Dona Amélia is an Angolan refugee from the war who started her life anew in Olinda, in the Northeast of Brazil. From her photograph mural, her Brazilian daughter goes in search of her roots, divided between the family memories and the manifestations of African origin that she encounters along the way.

Solitudes goes from laugh to drama, from musical to documentary, from romantic comedy to mean satire, keeping loneliness focused in all its aspects at all times, in many stories that are linked to each other.

Cássia Eller Rejane. Cássia Eller. Cássia. A powerful restless force on stage, shined herself out of it. One of the greats of Brazilian music, Cássia Eller marked the 1990s and shocked the country with her early death in 2001. A film about the singer, the mother, the woman who exposed her personal life and broke barriers, leaving a beautiful social and artistic legacy.

Vini Jr. has it all: talent, resilience and boldness. Follow his dancing, unpredictable feet on his inspiring journey to becoming a global soccer star.

Reconstruction of the life of Wilsinho, who was a dangerous criminal by the time he was 14. After getting arrested multiple times, he finally was killed by the police at the home of his girlfriend Geni.

Osvaldão, a guerrilla leader, is hidden in the woods with guns in his hands, pursued by thousands of soldiers. He is feared by the military dictatorship and adored by the people. The film tells the trajectory of this boxing champion who became commander of the Araguaia Guerrilla.

Documentary on one of Brazil's most controversial personalities: Getúlio Vargas, an ex-president.

August, 1980. Evandro Carreira, a Brazilian senator leaves his party's office in Manaus to visit his constituents in the state of Amazonas. Interviews with farmhands, loggers, explorer Paulo Lucena, Brazilian and Peruvian Indians and a representative of the National Indian Foundation (Funai) were recorded from the city of Benjamin Constant to the village of Cavalo Cocho. A visit to the indigenous village of the Ticunas and the lands of the Maiuruna people culminate with an interview and the actions of José Francisco da Cruz, a member of the Order of the Holy Cross. Throughout the trip, the economic potential of the Amazon and its problems (corruption in the indigenous policies and the pollution produced by factories) are shown.

Young, gifted and black! In an act of self-empowerment, a group of young Black people, mainly first and second generation immigrants from the Caribbean, have occupied the public space of the Toronto underground to perform their agitprop concept of edutainment – poets, rappers, singers and musicians.

A documentary about Joao Guimaraes Rosa's stay in Nazi Germany. The film captures the experience of the Brazilian vice-consul in Hamburg between 1938 and 1942, at the height of the Nazi regime and during the first years of the World War II. Using his writings from that time, as well as archive pictures, documents, survivors testimonies, and an unpublished interview with him, the film reveals new biographical aspects of one of the greatest writers in Brazilian history.

In 1976, Gilberto Gil traveled to Lagos (Nigeria) with the purpose of participating in the Second Festival of Black Art and Culture. The event had the participation of approximately fifty thousand Afro-descendant and Diaspora artists. After the trip, Gil released the album Refavela. The documentary celebrates the 40th anniversary of this album essential album for the Brazilian Popular Music.

No overview available

Documentary about the conflicts currently involving the Amazon. The film captures the everyday activity of several social groups fighting for their space, such as indians, landowners, landless workers, prospectors, among others. Scientists, specialists and public figures are interviewed, aiming to map out the current state of things and the consequences of the human occupation of the Brazilian Amazon.

No overview available

Guitarist Lanny Gordin was one of the fundamental characters in the transformation of Brazilian music from the 1960s onwards. He electrified Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Jards Macalé, among others. Lanny reveals his libertarian process of composition and current thinking, embarking on an unusual odyssey through China, his birthplace, and Brazil, the country where he lives.

Against the backdrop of a turbulent era in Brazil, this documentary captures Pelé's extraordinary path from breakthrough talent to national hero. Mixing rare archival footage and exclusive interviews, this documentary celebrates the legendary Brazilian footballer who personified football as art.

"they lived and laughed und loved end left" — a filmed diary of 2013

The unexpected victory over Uruguay in the World Cup Brazil 1950 continues to have social and political ramifications for both countries.

A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.

Wandering Heart intimately follows Caetano from São Paulo to New York and Japan, during the release of his first album recorded solely in English. It takes considerably more than a week-long series of shows at Carnegie Hall, accolades in the New York Times, or the admiration of friends like Pedro Almodóvar, David Byrne and Michelangelo Antonioni to make Caetano feel comfortable outside of Brazil.

A place-specific film-excavation of Bixiga neighborhood-São Paulo. Choreography of forces that cross present time. Filmancy, clairvoyance is the vision of what is taking shape. Allegory: lobby-color, speculates. Hollow in the heart of the city, a rock. A bird ‘rappina’ lands. Novelty: Quilombo, alley, dealers: step. Vai-Vai samba school’s black and white banner. Pictograms from Benjamin’s “The Arcades project”. Progress: pluging the river while it’s possible. Commodity: Matarazzo & Metro. The real state of things, real estate: banning organic. Ground- quotation, avocados, blue taroes, water tanks, oxum: (cosmo) political reaction. Rheme maining sources: life asking for passage.

Set against the turbulent atmosphere of the 1960s, Tropicália is a feature length documentary exploring the Brazilian artistic movement known as Tropicália, and the struggle its artists endured to protect their right to freely express revolutionary thought against the traditional Brazilian music of that time.

In this "fake documentary", a doctor returns to Brazil after his studies in Paris. Setting out to practice Medicine, he becomes an indigenous messiah and, in time, a cannibal.

The film follows Brazilian Formula 1 driver Felipe Nasr as he competes in a real race, capturing a story unfolding in real time.