'Arrival' South American premiere to open Rio

The 2016 Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (Oct 6-16) will open with the South American premiere of Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which premiered at Venice Film Festival.

The festival’s full line-up, which was revealed earlier this week, will include 20 world premieres. The majority of those are local productions selected to compete for the Redentor award (a trophy that resembles the Christ Redeemer statue, made of 35mm film pieces).

The event’s competitive strand, Premiere Brasil, will feature eight titles this year, all of which have been selected to showcase new productions in the country’s film industry.

Seven of those films are world premieres, including the most recent titles of established directors, such as Andrucha Waddington (Me, You, Them and The House of Sand), and debuts from emerging film-makers including Jose Luiz Villamarim.

Under Pressure, directed by Waddington, portrays a tense day at a Brazilian public hospital, where doctors will have to face a tough decision when three seriously ill patients need help at the same time (and they have the resources to help just one).

With Whirlpool, Villamarim debuts with the story of two childhood friends who meet again after many years to begin the uneasy process of reckoning with their past.

Charly Braun, who won the Best Director Prize in Rio in 2010 with Beyond the Road, competes this time with Russian Red. It follows the story of two young actresses in crisis with their profession who travel to Russia to study the famous Stanislavsky technique of interpretation.

Oscar-nominated director Paulo Machline (with his 2001 short film A Soccer Story) will present The Eternal Son, the story of a writer who learns that his newborn son has Down’s syndrome.

Three more films from the section will have world premieres in Rio: Erico Rassi’s Comeback, Felipe Sholl’s The Other End and Cristiane Oliveira’s A Woman and the Father. Eliane Caffé’s Era O Hotel Cambridge, which premiered at the recent San Sebastian Film Festival, is also included in the line-up.

Among the international titles, Steven Bernstein’s Dominion will have its premiere in Brazil. It revisits the last days of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Rhys Ifans) in the 1950’s. Rodrigo Santoro, one of the most international Brazilian actors, also stars, playing the barman at the White Horse, in New York, which the writer used to frequent.

Rio market

As usual, Rio will screen the recent works of acclaimed filmmakers who have been in Cannes, Venice, Berlin and other major film festivals this year for local audiences. The World Panorama section includes Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake, Terrence Malick’s Voyage Of Time, Jim Jarmusch’s Cannes pair Paterson and Gimme Danger, Wim Wenders’ Les Beaux Jours d’Aranjuez and André Téchiné’s Being 17.

In total, more than 250 titles from more than 60 countries will be shown. 

RioMarket, the business arm of the festival in Rio, expects to host 3,000 audiovisual professionals, from Brazil and overseas. During the event, American producer Steven Wolfe will discuss his 2009 film 500 Days of Summer as an example of a successful low budget film.

The English director, producer and screenwriter Allan Cubitt will talk about his experience with the TV series The Fall, which he created. British screenwriter Jeremy Evans, writer of TV programmes and features including the BBC’s The Natural World, will conduct a master class about script writing.

Held over eight days (Oct 5-12), the seminars, speeches and workshops will focus on four different areas: TV, cinema, fashion in film and audiovisual advertising.

Some of the themes discussed will include original content, business models, financing, coproductions, digital distribution, marketing campaigns and legislation.

RioMarket, which will take place at Colegio Brasileiro de Altos Estudos - UFRJ, will again promote meetings between professionals to intensify networking and to create business opportunities.