BRICS Film Festival In Fortaleza Shows How Global South Cinema Is Quietly Rewiring Influence

Key Points

• Free BRICS film festival in Fortaleza turns a cultural event into real soft power.
• Brazil uses its BRICS presidency to market itself as a pragmatic, business-friendly creative hub.
• Films and panels bypass traditional Western gatekeepers and build direct ties among emerging-market industries.

The ninth BRICS Film Festival has turned Fortaleza, in Brazil’s northeastern state of Ceará, into a capital of Global South cinema.

For four days, the Dragão do Mar Arts and Culture Center and the nearby Cinema do Dragão host free screenings, debates and industry meetings backed by Brazil’s Ministry of Culture.

On paper, it is a film festival. In practice, it is a networking machine. Recent productions from Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Russia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates fill the program, ranging from fiction features and shorts to documentaries and animation.

Tickets cost nothing and can be collected at the cinema box office, bringing students, families and industry people into the same rooms.

Brazil Uses BRICS Film Festival to Signal Stability and Openness

The opening film, “Morte e Vida Madalena,” by Ceará director Guto Parente, follows a film producer who is eight months pregnant, grieving her father and struggling to finish a chaotic low-budget sci-fi project.

Another key title is “Guarda o Coração na Palma da Mão e Caminha,” by filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, which links her story to that of a Palestinian woman in Gaza filming daily life under bombardment.

Mornings are given over to panels on film policy, financing and co-productions. Officials and producers from BRICS and partner countries compare notes on how to fund projects, reach platforms and improve accessibility without turning everything into propaganda.

In parallel, the Brazil Creative Industries Market (MICBR + Ibero-Américas) brings buyers and creators from across Latin America and Ibero-America.

Created in 2016, the BRICS Film Festival rotates between member states and has already passed through India, China, Russia and South Africa, plus a 2019 edition in Brazil.

Hosting it again during its BRICS presidency allows Brazil to send a clear message: it wants to be seen as a stable, open economy that treats culture as an industry, not a battlefield, and that prefers practical cooperation over grand ideological speeches.

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