Brazil’s development and training hub BrLab has announced the winners of its 15th edition, with Miami-based FiGa Films acquiring the sales rights to Val Hidalgo and Alice Stamato’s prizewinning drama “Ninho Tinto” (Red Nest).
The film from the Brazilian duo was among 12 projects selected for the annual event, which hosts producers, directors and writers from across Latin America, Spain and Portugal for a week of workshops, labs, mentorship and industry programming in São Paulo. A series of satellite events also take place in Brasília and Recife through early May.
Since its first edition in 2011, BrLab has grown from a small workshop for regional filmmakers into a key player in the development of independent cinema in Brazil, Latin America and the wider Ibero-American region, with projects from over 15 countries invited to take part this year.
“Reaching 15 years is both a celebration and a statement of persistence,” said BrLab founder, director and curator Rafael Sampaio. “Also, it’s a moment to evaluate and reaffirm our purposes and structures, considering all changes and challenges we’ve been facing in different countries in Latin America and everywhere.”
Sampaio noted that “this a region full of talents and creativity where producers and filmmakers constantly navigate instability — financial, political, institutional. In this international context, BrLab has become a regular solid event where projects are challenged and supported, experiencing this initial and fundamental moment in which a film is still only words and intentions.”
Along with its carefully curated line-up and hands-on approach to the development and support of each project, BrLab functions as a crucial bridge connecting filmmakers to both the regional and the international industry.
“Filmmakers and producers don’t just develop their films in isolation — they connect not only with themselves and tutors but also with co-producers, festivals and decision-makers that we bring to be part of each edition of BrLab, helping to position the curated projects internationally from an early stage,” said Sampaio. “In a context where structural support can be inconsistent, that mix of rigor, continuity and real access is what allows projects to move forward — not just as ideas, but as films that can exist and circulate.”
This year saw organizers introduce a raft of changes, including a shift from the event’s traditional October slot to early April, the launch of BrLab Kids, a new workshop dedicated to film and series projects for children and young audiences, and the introduction of a green initiative focused on sustainable industry practices in Latin America, backed by the event’s new presenting partner and lead sponsor, Petrobas.
“It is not about changing what already works — it’s about consolidating it and expanding its reach,” said Sampaio. “Rather than a shift in format, what we’ve done is to solidify the core of BrLab — the depth of the labs, the close mentorship, the international dialogue — while creating new layers around it. The idea is to strengthen the ecosystem that surrounds the projects, not just the projects themselves.”
One of the key additions this year was the Think Tank, which the lab developed in partnership with Petrobras and Cinema Verde. “It opens a space for broader, more strategic reflection on the Brazilian and Latin American industry — bringing together different players to discuss structural challenges, sustainability and the future of audiovisual production in Brazil and Latin America,” said Sampaio. “It’s less about immediate outcomes and more about long-term positioning.”
As of 2025, 62 feature films that participated in BrLab’s various sections have been produced and released, among them Diego Céspedes’ “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo” (Chile), which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section last year; Lila Halla’s “Levante” (Brazil), which screened in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2023; and “Légua,” by Portuguese filmmakers Filipa Reis and João Guerra, which premiered at Directors’ Fortnight the same year.
That track record is a tribute to the work that Sampaio and the organizing team continue to do to pursue their vision despite what he refers to as “institutional fragility,” particularly with funding for Brazil’s national film agency, Ancine, slashed under right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro. Ancine was not among the supporters of the 15th edition of BrLab, which took place through partnerships with Programa Ibermedia, Spcine, Projeto Paradiso and Petrobras.
“The absence of Ancine was something unexpected that had an impact on the co-pro forum, but…our trajectory taught us we need to be more solid than our institutions,” Sampaio said. “The history of Latin American cinema and of BrLab reflects much more the struggle of professionals than institutions. It’s the effort of an international industry against the fragility of our politics and governments.”
Here’s a rundown of this year’s BrLab winners:
Vitrine Films Distribution Award: “Irmã Mais Velha” (The Older Sister)
Director: Rafaela Camelo
Producers: André Pereira, Mariana Muniz
Screenwriters: Rafaela Camelo, André Pereira
Courtesy of BrLab
After her older sister dies tragically, 11-year-old Isabel is forced to live with her mother, Verônica, who hides a long-suppressed gift: the ability to channel the dead. Camelo, whose first feature, “The Nature of Invisible Things,” premiered at the Berlinale last year, noted: “I like to say that [my first film] shows how not every death has to be a tragedy. In ‘The Older Sister,’ the perspective on death changes radically. Here, death is inherently the tragedy that sets the story in motion. Isabel and Verônica must face this loss together, experience grief in its full intensity, and deal with the consequences it brings to their lives.”
Pop Up Film Residency Award: “El Umbral” (The Threshold)
Director: Inti Jacanamijoy
Producers: Jorge Forero, Inti Jacanamijoy
Screenwriter: Inti Jacanamijoy, Óscar Adán
Courtesy of BrLab
A coming-of-age story about grief, memory and ancestral knowledge, “The Threshold” follows a young boy who returns to his family home after the death of his grandfather, a renowned shaman. When his grandmother also falls ill and prepares to cross the Kuriyako, the sacred place where her people go to die, an ancestral presence arrives in the house, blurring the boundary between the living and the dead. It’s a film that “connects a family story with the spiritual and metaphysical universe that inhabits our territories,” according to Forero, presenting “a cinematic proposal with the potential to become a standout film in today’s landscape.”
Cinéma en Développement + Projeto Paradiso Award: “Dentro do Rio” (Inside the River)
Director/screenwriter: Bárbara Matias Kariri
Producer: Maurício Macêdo
Courtesy of BrLab
When the construction of a dam threatens to submerge the indigenous community of Barro Vermelho, Lourdes, a teacher and single mother, is torn between accepting compensation and moving to the city or resisting alongside her family and community, for whom ancestry is a force of resistance and renewal. Matias Kariri said the story is “rooted in the Kariri cosmovision, bringing a perspective from Brazil’s deep interior with authenticity, imagination and a strong sense of authorship.” It uses a unique combination of animation with influences from theater and poetry to “reimagine trauma while opening space for other ways of being and understanding the world.”
Cesnik, Quintino, Salinas, Valerio and Fittipaldi Award: “A Última Cachorra” (The Last Dog on Earth)
Director: Nina Kopko
Producer: Letícia Friederich
Screenwriters: Tainá Tokitaka, Nina Kopko
Courtesy of BrLab
Set in the very near future in São Paulo, where a new pandemic is thought to have eradicated the planet’s canine population, a rideshare driver is forced to decide if she’s going to stick to her plan to take her own life or find a way to protect what may be the last dog on earth. “Stories involving dogs create an immediate connection with a large part of the audience, due to the emotional place they occupy in our lives,” said the filmmakers. “Imagining a world where they are disappearing generates even more curiosity, especially as it takes place in the near future — both strange and familiar.”
BrLab Audience Design
Vitrine Lab Award: “Show da Xoxa” (Xoxa’s Show)
Director/screenwriter: Rastricinha Dorneles
Producer: Hilda Pontes Lopes
Courtesy of BrLab
The dystopian parody “Xoxa’s Show” is set in a world where Brazil’s most popular TV show stars are subjected to humiliations and violent challenges disguised as entertainment. When members of the crew begin to die, the line between spectacle and extermination starts to blur. Led by a trans crew and cast, “Xoxa’s Show” is “a celebration of the creativity of trans people,” said Dorneles. “Participating in BrLab is very important so that our careers, mine as a transvestite and Hilda’s as a non-binary person, are recognized and we can realize this work that plays with the collective imagination of the trans population with extreme intimacy.”
BrLab Rough Cut
Tanto Award: “Ninho Tinto” (Red Nest)
Directors: Val Hidalgo, Alice Stamato
Producer: Thiago Briglia
‘Red Nest’ (Courtesy of BrLab)
Set in northern Brazil, “Red Nest” follows a Venezuelan immigrant, Frangela, whose stable life is upended by the unexpected arrival of her 11-year-old son. With Alejandro’s arrival, both Frangela and her partner try to build an emotional bond with the boy as they attempt to create a new home. “What is a home?” the directors asked. While the word can mean many things, “there is something that always runs through it: the affections we weave around it, the people we form bonds with, and the small gestures through which we offer and share parts of ourselves,” they said. “Red Nest” offers “a sensitive portrait of how these bonds are rebuilt within a migratory context shaped by vulnerability. Yet it is also, above all, a gesture of resilience and an affirmation of life.”
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