Brazil, Soft Power and Film Culture

This article takes as its starting point what we define as Brazil’s soft-power halcyon days (around 2009), as the nation seems set to maximize a range of opportunities (the upcoming World Cup and Olympics, for example) to take on a more significant role in global politics. It assesses the potential contribution of cinema to the Brazilian soft-power narrative, focusing on film policy, support for the dissemination of Brazilian films abroad and the place of film production within Brazil’s soft-power vision. It then discusses two films – Lula: Filho do Brasil (Lula: Son of Brazil, Barreto, 2009) and Aquarius (Mendonça Filho, 2016) – and the extent to which they trouble the very notion of film as a soft-power asset in Brazil. It concludes by commenting on more recent events in Brazil, and their likely effect on both the nation as a soft-power powerhouse and on film production in the country more broadly.