Outside views · South America
10 Best Movies Set in or About Brazil
Compare foreign depictions of the Amazon, favelas, dictatorship, music, sport, and inequality with Brazil’s own arguments about those subjects.
Compare this list
Compare the route at a glance
Runtime, mood, and entry level help narrow the list without replacing the editorial ranking.
| Film | Runtime | Genre | Mood | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Notorious | 103 min | Romance · Mystery · Drama | romantic · thoughtful · dark | first visit · film history |
| Trash | 114 min | Adventure · Crime · Drama | tense · thoughtful · adventurous | character-driven drama |
| Pelé: Birth of a Legend | 107 min | Drama | thoughtful · uplifting | character-driven drama |
| The Boys from Brazil | 125 min | Drama · Mystery · Science Fiction | thoughtful · dark | first visit |
| That Man from Rio | 117 min | Adventure · Action · Comedy | funny · adventurous | a lighter route · film history |
| The Emerald Forest | 114 min | Action · Adventure · Drama | thoughtful · adventurous | character-driven drama |
| OSS 117: Lost in Rio | 100 min | Crime · Action · Comedy | tense · funny · dark | shorter watch · a lighter route |
| Alvorada | 80 min | Documentary | thoughtful | shorter watch · documentary viewers · film history |
| The Rundown | 104 min | Adventure · Action · Comedy | funny · adventurous | first visit · a lighter route |
| Babysitting 2 | 93 min | Comedy | funny | shorter watch · a lighter route |
10 Movies Set in or About Brazil
Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Brazil.
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 103 min
- Genre
- Romance · Mystery · Drama
- Mood
- romantic · thoughtful · dark
- Best for
- first visit · film history
Content notes: war or political violence
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 114 min
- Genre
- Adventure · Crime · Drama
- Mood
- tense · thoughtful · adventurous
- Best for
- character-driven drama
Content notes: violence or threat
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 107 min
- Genre
- Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful · uplifting
- Best for
- character-driven drama
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 125 min
- Genre
- Drama · Mystery · Science Fiction
- Mood
- thoughtful · dark
- Best for
- first visit
Content notes: war or political violence
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 117 min
- Genre
- Adventure · Action · Comedy
- Mood
- funny · adventurous
- Best for
- a lighter route · film history
Content notes: violence or threat
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 114 min
- Genre
- Action · Adventure · Drama
- Mood
- thoughtful · adventurous
- Best for
- character-driven drama
Content notes: violence or threat
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 100 min
- Genre
- Crime · Action · Comedy
- Mood
- tense · funny · dark
- Best for
- shorter watch · a lighter route
Content notes: war or political violence · violence or threat
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 80 min
- Genre
- Documentary
- Mood
- thoughtful
- Best for
- shorter watch · documentary viewers · film history
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 104 min
- Genre
- Adventure · Action · Comedy
- Mood
- funny · adventurous
- Best for
- first visit · a lighter route
-
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.
Details
- Runtime
- 93 min
- Genre
- Comedy
- Mood
- funny
- Best for
- shorter watch · a lighter route
Hear the country first
10 Best Brazilian Movies to Watch First
Move through Cinema Novo, political memory, city life, documentary, popular genre filmmaking, and stories from well beyond the country’s most exported images.
- City of God 2002
- Elite Squad 2007
- I'm Still Here 2024
Selected by the FilmsAroundThe.World editorial desk
Selections require an outside creative lead and a story or subject substantially centered on Brazil. Decision labels are concise editorial aids, and content notes are non-exhaustive. Read the methodology.
Editorial review: 2026-07-13
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