FilmsFilm Guide
Navigate our entire catalog to learn what HBRFF has programmed in the past. We are proud to have curated in the past 15 years more than 170 films that are the best of what has been produced in Brazil.
Bruno is a young, fatherless teenager living in a small town in the Brazilian heartland who confronts a degenerative eye disease that will ultimately leave him blind.
Teresa and her husband travel to their family farm to take refuge from urban violence. But there they face a revolt by local workers, alarmed by the imminent loss of their homes. She locks herself in her armoured car, but is unable to start it. Meanwhile, workers try to communicate with her and if necessary, take her out by force. The layer of armour that separates these two universes may not be enough to contain the fear and violence that grows every passing minute.
It centers on how the name of Brazil's biggest airport, Guarulhos, references the fact that it was built on indigenous territory. It follows a member of the ground staff as she seeks her roots beneath the runway.
Patpro, recounting the history, struggle for land took place in 1940. Krahô never stop inventing new forms of resistance , guided by their ancestral rites, and their fight to preserve their freedom.
As a virus spreads throughout Brazil, a young filmmaker goes back to his hometown and tries to rekindle his relationship with his father. But as they become closer, stranger events start to happen, making their connection more difficult.
Big Bang: Chico earns his living by repairing ovens, in which he enters easily thanks to his small size. Faced with the contempt of a system that relegates him to the ranks of the marginalized, he gradually enters into resistance. /// Mãri Hi: When the flowers of the Mãri tree blossom, dreams arise. The words of a great shaman guide an oniric experience through the synergy between cinema and the Yanomami dream, presenting poetics and teachings of the forest people. /// Incompatible with Life: From her personal experience of a pregnancy with diagnosis of fetal malformation incompatible with life, a filmmaker sheds light onto women who went through a similar situation in Brazil, where abortion may lead to prison. The film creates a choir of voices that reflects on motherhood and grief.
Chico earns his living by repairing ovens, in which he enters easily thanks to his small size. Faced with the contempt of a system that relegates him to the ranks of the marginalized, he gradually enters into resistance.
When the flowers of the Mãri tree blossom, dreams arise. The words of a great shaman guide an oniric experience through the synergy between cinema and the Yanomami dream, presenting poetics and teachings of the forest people.
From her personal experience of a pregnancy with diagnosis of fetal malformation incompatible with life, a filmmaker sheds light onto women who went through a similar situation in Brazil, where abortion may lead to prison. The film creates a choir of voices that reflects on motherhood and grief.
It’s Aisha’s last day in Belo Horizonte. We follow her farewell in the company of her best friends: Bramma, Igui and Will. Through the everyday life and encounters between the characters, the film weaves an affectionate portrait of a family that is built by choice, through the value of friendship.
A lower middle class family undergoes a series of challenging and profound changes, reinventing themselves and their family ties along the way.
At the end of a long workday, OUSMANE, a Burkinabé immigrant living in Montreal, has his life take a turn when he meets an elderly disoriented neighbor.
While immigrating to Brazil, a Venezuelan mother's ability to breastfeed causes her fate to be forever intertwined with a young mother and her baby.
Tired of loneliness, a middle-aged motorcyclist goes to a lesbian party for the first time. There she meets four young polyamorous queer people. As they come together, their universes create a timeless identification shared by a common language.
Sideral is a 2021 Brazilian and French short film directed by Carlos Segundo. The fifteen-minute story shot in Black & White is a glimpse into the lives of a Brazilian family impacted by the extraordinary event of rocket launch from a nearby centre.
On the border between the real and the fantastic, between the colonial past and the overwhelming modernity of agribusiness, the city of Goiás is the stage of the meeting between the young Fernanda and her secret roots.
Simone 23-year-old studies criminal law and advocates for women's rights and at night she performs in front of a live sex cam. One night watching a film awakens her dark impulses for a more dangerous means of sexual gratification.
The special temperament of having grown up in a different country than that of one of your parents, the feeling of the first journey but also of a ‘return’. Award-winning Karim Aïnouz travels from motherland Fortaleza of Brazil to Kabylia in Algeria, his father’s country. His father was separated from his wife while she was pregnant to fight for Algeria’s independence. And he does that in the form of a poetic journey, a deep memoir-letter to his recently deceased mother.
A single mother lives with her only son. She can't find him when she returns from work. After a relentless search, she finds out that he was killed by the police and his body is missing. She begins a journey for the right to bury his body.
Filmmaker Ana Petta and doctor Helena Petta follow public health workers in marginalized areas of Brazil as they fight to save lives during the pandemic. With a sensitive gaze, the directors spotlight women facing the greatest challenges of their careers. “Out of Breath” exposes the intersections of race, religion, and class through character-driven cinema vérité.
