RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Rio de Janeiro hosted a record 10,930 days of filming in 2025, a 24.6% increase from one year before, Leonardo Edde, president director of RioFilme, announced on March 12 during the Fórum Audiovisual & Turismo – an event aimed at discussing how film and TV productions can promote Brazil’s tourism and development.
Citing information from RioFilme’s Rio Film Commission, Edde added Rio had in 2025 more than 30 sets operating simultaneously all year long, taking into account the production of films, series, TV shows and commercials.
According to Edde, Brazilian productions accounted for 95.5% of the shooting days in Rio in 2025, while foreign productions accounted for 4.5%. 28 international productions shot in Rio last year.
“The Brazilian production market is very strong, and that’s great. But one of our main goals for this year is to attract more foreign productions to shoot here in Rio,” Edde said.
He added Rio is currently one of the most popular cities in the world for filming. Rio passed Paris in 2023 in terms of shooting days, and has narrowed the gap to Madrid, which hosted 11,001 shooting days in 2025.
The first edition of the Audiovisual and Tourism Forum was held in the Rio Art Museum (MAR) and was part of a larger tourist sector event, TurisMall 2026. Sérgio Sá Leitão, Brazil’s former Minister of Culture, and Steve Solot, former senior VP for Latin America of MPA, were the event’s curators.
Solot stressed in his keynote speech at the Forum that films are more effective than advertising in promoting a tourist destination, because they reach more people, have a longer effect and create emotional links with viewers.
“Audiovisual feeds tourism, tourism feeds audiovisual. Together, these two sectors generate a great amount of revenues and jobs. We have good examples of cities in Brazil that use film and TV productions to promote themselves as tourist destination, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement,” Leitão said.
Sérgio Sá Leitão
Leave a Reply