Elza Soares Gets Her Flowers as Black Brazilian Cinema Takes Festival do Rio

Elza Soares spent her life refusing to be quiet. She grew up in Rio's favelas, sang her way out of poverty, and spent seven decades using her voice to talk about race, hunger, violence against women and being Black in a country that still pretends it doesn't see color. She died in 2022 at 91. This month, she won again.

Elza, Eryk Rocha's documentary about the singer, won best documentary at the 28th Festival do Rio. The festival ran Oct. 1–11, and the winners were announced at the closing ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 11, at the historic Cine Odeon in downtown Rio. The film had its world premiere at the festival. Rocha shot it over eight years with Elza herself, building the story from her own voice, her music, her memories and archival footage. He treats her life as a lens on Brazil's history, not just one woman's biography.

It's the kind of film that matters well beyond Brazil. Elza is often described abroad as Brazil's answer to Nina Simone or Tina Turner, but those comparisons always flatten her. She was entirely her own. A documentary made with her, not just about her, is a gift to anyone who wants to understand Black Brazil beyond the postcard.

Gabriel Martins does it again

The other big winner of the night was Gabriel Martins. The director behind Marte Um, Brazil's Oscar submission a few years ago, won best fiction director and best screenplay for Vicentina Pede Desculpas. Festival audiences also voted it best fiction feature.

The film stars Rejane Faria as Vicentina, a 75-year-old retired schoolteacher in Belo Horizonte. Her son Wesley is a bus driver, and his bus goes off a viaduct, killing him and most of his passengers. When security footage suggests he may have done it on purpose, Vicentina sets out to apologize to the victims' families. What she finds doesn't match what she expected. The cast also includes Grace Passô, Flavio Bauraqui, Bárbara Colen, Carlos Francisco and Thalma de Freitas, with music by Tiganá Santana.

Martins co-founded Filmes de Plástico in April 2009 in Contagem, a working-class city outside Belo Horizonte, alongside fellow directors André Novais Oliveira and Maurílio Martins and producer Thiago Macêdo Correia. From the start, the company's mission has been to put Black and working-class Brazilians at the center of the frame. That work has taken them to Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Locarno and Rotterdam. Vicentina had its international premiere at TIFF in September, in the Platform competition. In English it's titled On Behalf of My Son, and it opens in select Brazilian theaters on Nov. 5 before streaming.

Grace Passô shares the spotlight

Grace Passô shared best actress for A Professora de Francês with Isabel Teixeira (Diário do Fogo). Passô is one of Brazil's most respected artists across stage and screen: an actor, playwright, director and screenwriter. She has spoken often about how her experience as a Black woman, and her relationship with negritude and racial identity in Brazil, shapes everything she makes.

That makes this a big festival for her. Besides her winning lead turn, she's also in the cast of Vicentina Pede Desculpas. A Professora de Francês also won best supporting actor for Pedro Goifman and best original score for Florencia Di Concilio.

The rest of the winners

The festival's top prize, best fiction feature, went to A Margem do Rio from Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias. It also won best supporting actress, shared by Renna Costa, Artia and Ísis Broken, along with best cinematography and best sound. Victor di Marco was named best actor for LONDON, which came to Rio after premiering in Venice. Camila Valença won best documentary director for Cão Sem Plumas, and Anna Azevedo's Fui Olhar Você Dormir took the audience prize for documentary.

Why it matters

Brazilian cinema is having a moment. It's been in Cannes, in the Oscar conversation, and back in theaters at home. But the international story tends to center on a handful of names. What Festival do Rio showed this year is that the most urgent Brazilian films are coming from places and people the industry has historically overlooked: favela-born icons, Black filmmakers from Minas Gerais, and stories about grief and responsibility in working-class neighborhoods.

Elza Soares would have liked that. She spent her life saying Brazil needed to listen. This year, at least for one night in Rio, it did.