Country guide · South America
10 Essential Brazilian Films + 10 Movies Set in or About Brazil
Brazil on the atlas: the strongest films of its own cinema, and the films the rest of the world has set there. Every list is curated and ranked by hand.
10 Essential Brazilian Films
Native cinema in Brazil’s own creative voice — the passport route that earns visas and citizenship.
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1. City of God
Over two decades in a violent Rio de Janeiro favela, a sensitive young man dreams of becoming a photographer while a childhood acquaintance rises to rule the drug trade. Fernando Meirelles's electrifying, kaleidoscopic epic of crime and survival.
Curator’s note: A Portuguese-language Brazilian crime drama and one of the most globally visible modern Brazilian films.
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2. Elite Squad
A hardened captain of Rio's brutal special police unit, hunting for a successor as a papal visit looms, narrates the corrupting grind of the war against the favelas' drug gangs. A ferocious, controversial police drama.
Curator’s note: A Brazilian Portuguese-language crime drama about Rio policing and urban violence.
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3. I'm Still Here
Under Brazil's military dictatorship in the early 1970s, a mother of five is forced to hold her family together and quietly resist after her husband, a former congressman, is seized by the regime. Based on a true story, a powerful drama of endurance.
Curator’s note: I'm Still Here ranked among the strongest verified Brazil-authored features for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and importance within the national cinema.
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4. Central Station
A jaded former schoolteacher who scrapes by writing letters for the illiterate at Rio's train station reluctantly takes charge of a boy orphaned by tragedy, and the two set off across Brazil to find the father he never knew. A tender road movie.
Curator’s note: An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.
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5. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
Promoted into the political machinery of Rio's security apparatus, the special-forces colonel discovers that the real corruption runs far deeper than the drug gangs he once fought — reaching into the police and government themselves. A gripping crime saga.
Curator’s note: Elite Squad: The Enemy Within ranked among the strongest verified Brazil-authored features for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and importance within the national cinema.
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6. The Salt of the Earth
This documentary surveys the life and work of photographer Sebastião Salgado, whose black-and-white images have chronicled famine, war, and human dignity across the globe — and whose later turn toward nature offers a note of hope. Co-directed by Wim Wenders.
Curator’s note: The Salt of the Earth ranked among the strongest verified Brazil-authored features for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and importance within the national cinema.
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7. The Secret Agent
In 1977, under Brazil's dictatorship, a technology expert on the run returns to Recife during Carnival hoping to reunite with his son, only to find the city is no refuge. Kleber Mendonça Filho's atmospheric political thriller.
Curator’s note: The Secret Agent ranked among the strongest verified Brazil-authored features for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and importance within the national cinema.
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8. Bacurau
A remote town in the Brazilian backlands buries its matriarch and soon notices something stranger: it has vanished from the maps, and outsiders with sinister intentions are closing in. The townsfolk prepare to defend themselves. A genre-bending blend of Western and thriller.
Curator’s note: A Brazilian Portuguese-language genre allegory about rural community, violence, and resistance.
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9. The Boy and the World
Grieving his father's departure for the city, a small boy sets out from his village and tumbles into a dazzling, overwhelming world of machines and strange creatures. A nearly wordless, hand-drawn animated wonder about a child's-eye view of a modern country.
Curator’s note: The Boy and the World ranked among the strongest verified Brazil-authored features for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and importance within the national cinema.
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10. The Second Mother
A live-in housekeeper in São Paulo has spent years caring for her employers' son while her own daughter grew up far away. When the daughter arrives to sit a university exam and refuses to observe the household's unspoken class rules, everything is quietly upended. A sharp, warm drama.
Curator’s note: A Brazilian Portuguese-language domestic-worker drama about class and family in São Paulo.
10 Movies Set in or About Brazil
Outside filmmakers looking toward Brazil: optional perspectives for a wider journey.
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1. Notorious
To help expose a Nazi ring hiding in postwar Rio, an American agent recruits the daughter of a convicted traitor and sends her to infiltrate their circle by marrying their leader — even as the two agents fall in love. Hitchcock's peerless romantic thriller.
Curator’s note: Notorious is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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2. Trash
Three boys scavenging a Rio garbage dump find a lost wallet that draws them into a dangerous mystery reaching to the top of the city's corrupt establishment. Hunted by the police, they set out to right a wrong. A high-energy adventure.
Curator’s note: Trash is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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3. Pelé: Birth of a Legend
This biographical drama follows the young Pelé from the favelas to the 1958 World Cup, as a poor boy with a distinctive, joyful style of play rises to become the greatest footballer his country has ever known.
Curator’s note: Pelé: Birth of a Legend is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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4. The Boys from Brazil
A dogged Nazi hunter stumbles onto a chilling conspiracy hatched by the fugitive war criminal Josef Mengele, hidden in South America, to resurrect the Third Reich. A tense conspiracy thriller.
Curator’s note: The Boys from Brazil is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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5. That Man from Rio
A French soldier on leave chases his kidnapped fiancée from Paris to Rio de Janeiro, tumbling headlong into a globe-trotting caper involving stolen Amazonian treasure. A breathless, acrobatic adventure comedy.
Curator’s note: That Man from Rio is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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6. The Emerald Forest
An American engineer working on a dam spends ten years searching the Amazon for his young son, who vanished at the forest's edge and was raised by a remote tribe. When at last he finds him, two worlds collide. Inspired by a true story.
Curator’s note: The Emerald Forest is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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7. OSS 117: Lost in Rio
The preening, hopelessly un-self-aware French secret agent OSS 117 is sent to 1960s Rio to recover a list of Nazi collaborators, blundering through international intrigue with supreme confidence. A gleeful send-up of vintage spy movies.
Curator’s note: OSS 117: Lost in Rio is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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8. Alvorada
This documentary portrait of Brazil around 1960 captures a vast country in the throes of industrial and social change, moving between modern cities, sweeping landscapes, and the rhythms of its art and culture.
Curator’s note: Alvorada is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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9. The Rundown
A gentle-giant retrieval man is sent to a lawless Amazon mining town to bring home his boss's reckless son, only to be drawn into a hunt for a priceless artifact and a clash with the town's tyrant. A rollicking action comedy.
Curator’s note: The Rundown is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
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10. Babysitting 2
Franck, his girlfriend, their friends, and her sharp-tongued grandmother take a holiday in Brazil, where an outing to a jungle cave goes hilariously wrong and spirals into chaos. A raucous found-footage-style comedy sequel.
Curator’s note: Babysitting 2 is a strong foreign-authored film whose sustained setting or subject engages with Brazil.
Selected by the FilmsAroundThe.World editorial desk
Lists are ranked for craft, enduring reputation, influence, and depth of engagement with place. Native selections require a verified creative relationship to the country; souvenir selections require an outside creative lead and a country-centered story. Read the methodology.
Editorial review: 2026-07-13
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