Brazil's Film Industry Braces as Bolsonaro Leads Lula in Tight First-Round Vote

Brazilian filmmakers gathered at the Rio Film Festival this week watched a presidential vote that could decide how much public money their industry receives. The first round, held Sunday, put Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by less than two points.

Bolsonaro took 47.03% of valid votes to Lula’s 45.16%, Variety reported, in what it called the tightest race in the country’s history. Neither candidate cleared the majority threshold, so the two are headed to a runoff.

The festival ran alongside the campaign, and industry figures did not hide their anxiety. Director Marcelo Gomes told an audience at the festival’s market that the audiovisual sector carries “great economic importance for Brazil,” and warned that a government indifferent to culture could put those gains at risk. Karim Aïnouz, who presented “Rosebush Pruning” the day before the vote, declared his support for Lula from the stage and credited public policy for his career.

Their concern rests on the record of Flávio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, whose 2019 government cut the budgets of the national cinema agency ANCINE and the Audiovisual Sector Fund by nearly 43%, according to Variety. AFP’s account puts the fund’s cut at close to half, and reports that the administration froze grant bidding and threatened to close the agency unless it applied an ideological “filter.” Director Kleber Mendonça Filho told AFP that during those four years culture “in practical terms, was extinguished.”

Lula’s government restored the money. Film financing reached 1.4 billion reais, about $269 million, in 2025, an increase of 180% over 2021. Brazilian films have since gained international prominence, including “I’m Still Here” and “The Secret Agent,” both set during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

Variety reports that Flávio Bolsonaro has vowed to follow nearly all his father’s policies. His campaign has its own film connection. “Dark Horse,” a biopic of Jair Bolsonaro starring Jim Caviezel, has not yet opened in Brazil and will not arrive before the runoff. Federal police are examining how a fund tied to the production spent its money and have flagged an apparent mismatch with typical costs. Flávio has said all of the fund’s resources went to the movie.

Neither campaign has released a detailed cultural platform in the coverage reviewed.