A young girl disappears in a forest in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil.

In Rio de Janeiro, close to the mythical Maracana stadium, venue for the grand final of the World Cup 2014, we find an ordinary football field in the Sampaio neighborhood. There, football happens as a genuine expression of Brazilian culture. With the games on Sundays, the annual slum football league has 14 teams. Each represents the colors and rituals of their community. Geração x Juventude contest the final.

Amidst the small beautiful city of Guarapari, Brazil, Derek Rabelo’s father prayed that his son would become a famous professional surfer. Unfortunately on May 25th 1992, his prayer seemed unanswered when Derek was born blind. Seventeen years later Derek decided that despite his blindness he still wanted to surf and that he wanted to surf Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu. Through the encouragement of his parents, best friend, and surf coach, Derek embarked on a three-year journey of grueling mental, physical and spiritual training. As Derek perseveres towards his goal of surfing Pipeline, he inspires the best pro-surfers in the world including Kelly Slater, Damien Hobgood, Rob Machado, Lakey Peterson, Taj Burrow, Laird Hamilton and more, who are featured in the film. You will learn from Derek’s story that the best journeys in life are walked by faith, and not by sight.

A Brazilian theatre group that through talent, irony and humour confronted the Brazilian violent dictatorship in the 1970s revolutionising the gay movement worldwide and changing theatre and dance language to an entire generation.

Edgar is a young upper-middle class man, close to completing 30 years old, he lives a full life crisis and is in a position common to the vast majority of Brazilians. On the one hand the power, represented by a corrupt state, abusive and absent in their taxes before their obligations. On the other, crime increasingly organized violence became a constant in the lives of citizens in large cities. Edgar responds to all this as a modern vigilante. With the help of ingredients such as technology, counter-information and manipulation, Edgar concocts a brilliant plan, using the greed of their opponents as the reason for its destruction. As the plot unfolds, we know more about the dark past of each character as Edgar fit the pieces together in an intriguing puzzle that makes up the film’s plot.

Best friends Deco (Lázaro Ramos) and Naldinho (Wagner Moura) co-own a cargo boat in Brazil’s Salvador de Bahia. They give a ride to a sultry prostitute named Karinna (Alice Braga), and soon both men fall prey to her considerable sexual charms, pushing the bonds of their friendship to the limit.

Documentary about Brazilian soccer genius, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, aka Pelé.

Telmo is a retired theater director that realizes he doesn’t remember the time he spent kept in jail during the military dictatorship in Brazil. He decides to stage a play and, with threads of memory, he improvises the lines with his young cast. Telmo dives into his own history and ends up revealing for himself what, being so painful, he’d rather forget.

Life in a middle-class neighbourhood in present day Recife, Brazil, takes an unexpected turn after the arrival of an independent private security firm. The presence of these men brings a sense of safety and a good deal of anxiety to a culture which runs on fear. Meanwhile, Bia, married and mother of two, must find a way to deal with the constant barking and howling of her neighbour’s dog. A slice of ‘Braziliana’, a reflection on history, violence and noise.

In 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States and the Second World War was over. Right? Wrong. For eighty percent of the Japanese community in Brazil, Japan had won the war and defeat was nothing more than American propaganda. The few immigrants that accepted the truth were persecuted. Some were hunted down and assassinated – by their own countrymen – causing the start of a new, private war. Dirty Hearts is a thriller and love story told by the wife of one of the fanatics dedicated to preach Japanese victory. Little by little, she watches her husband, a hard-working immigrant, become an assassin and their love story fade away.

A simple can of ravioli propels this spectacular 30,000-kilometre, eight-country journey through all phases of food production and the far flung sources of international ingredients. A dream-like voyage with glimpses of disconcerting realities, the story begins with a single mother toiling in one of the biggest open pit mines in Brazil and ends on the shelf of a grocery store in Finland. Along the way, the workers whose calloused hands mine, raise and harvest each ingredient reveal their dreams and hopes, like the Danish pig farmer who loves his sows but longs for a girlfriend, and the Portuguese tomato picker who wants to stay healthy long enough to pay her daughters way through university. Sumptuous photography and impressive sound design make an eloquent statement about our modern, globalized world, making us aware of the hundreds of invisible people who prepare the food we eat every day. -Gisèle Gordon (HotDocs.ca)

José Henrique Fonseca crafts an ambitious and long overdue homage to a central icon in Brazil’s 20th century history. Reminiscent of film noir classics, the biopic tells the glorious and tragic story of the legendary football striker Heleno de Freitas. The sumptuous black and white cinematography reflects the chic life of Rio de Janeiro in the 1940s as it fell under the spell of sports royalty. Heleno was no doubt one of the most popular players of his time for his bravura in the field and magnificent goal-scoring that lead the Botafogo team to the top and himself into a vicious downward spiral.

Away from professional stadiums, bright lights, and manicured fields, there’s another side of soccer. Tucked away on alleys, side streets, and concrete courts, people play in improvised games. Every country has a different word for it. In the United States, we call it “pick-up soccer.” In Trinidad, it’s “taking a sweat.” In England, it’s “having a kick-about.” In Brazil, the word is “pelada,” which literally means “naked”—the game stripped down to its core. It’s the version of the game played by anyone, anywhere—and it’s a window into lives all around the world. Pelada is a documentary following Luke and Gwendolyn, two former college soccer stars who didn’t quite make it to the pros. Not ready for it to be over, they take off, chasing the game. From prisoners in Bolivia to moonshine brewers in Kenya, from freestylers in China to women who play in hijab in Iran, Pelada is the story of the people who play.

The lively João Grilo and the sly Chicó are poor guys living in the hinterland who cheat a bunch of people in a small Northeast Brazil town. But when they die, they have to be judged by Christ, the Devil and the Virgin Mary, before they are admitted to paradise.

Chappelle’s Show is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedians Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show as well as starring in various sketches. Chappelle, Brennan and Michele Armour were the show’s executive producers. The series premiered on January 22, 2003, on the American cable television network Comedy Central. The show ran for two complete seasons and a third, truncated season.

After numerous delays, production of the third season of the show was abruptly ended when Chappelle left the show. Three episodes were compiled from the completed work and these episodes aired from July 9 to July 23, 2006. Re-runs frequently air on Comedy Central and around the world on MTV in Germany, Comedy Central in Brazil, The Comedy Network in Canada, The Comedy Channel and 7mate in Australia and FX in the United Kingdom.

Chappelle’s Show was also shown on WGN America and was syndicated to various television stations across the U.S. including MyNetworkTV. TV Guide ranked it #31 on their list of “TV’s Top 100 Shows”.

Documentary about a famous Brazilian footballer who never touched a ball.

In 1951 New York poet Elizabeth Bishop travels to Rio de Janeiro to visit Mary, a college friend. The shy Elizabeth is overwhelmed by Brazilian sensuality. She is the antithesis to Mary’s dashing partner, architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Although frosty at first, the architect soon makes a play for Elizabeth and the poet finally succumbs to Lota’s advances. Mary is jealous, but unconventional Lota is determined to have both women at all costs. Their ménage à trois is thrown off balance when Lota starts work on her biggest project to date, designing Parque do Flamengo in Rio. Elizabeth accepts an academic teaching post in the USA and the women drift apart. Lota, at all other times brimming with self-confidence, is inconsolable. This eternal triangle plays out against the backdrop of the military coup of 1964. Bishop’s moving poems are at the core of a film which lushly illustrates a crucial phase in the life of this influential Pulitzer prize-winning poet

André, a teenager, lives in an industrial town in Brazil near an old aluminum factory. One day, a factory worker, Cristiano, suffers an accident. Asked to go to Cristiano’s house to pick up clothes and documents, André stumbles on a notebook, and it’s here that Araby begins — or, rather, transforms. As André reads from the journal entries, we are plunged into Cristiano’s life, into stories of his wanderings, adventures, and loves.

Traveling across the world including India, Brazil, Europe, Africa, Canada, and the USA – Generation Iron 3 will interview and follow bodybuilders, trainers, experts, and fans to determine what the universal ideal physique should look like. With so many divisions appearing within the bodybuilding leagues – what body type should be championed as the absolute best in the world?

The border between Brazil and Paraguay: living on opposite sides of a big river, Brazilian boy Joca falls in love with indigenous-Paraguayan girl Basano. A magical tale of impossible love and adventure in this land full of memories of colonial wars and indigenous genocide.

In order to take a new job as an employee in the public sanitation department, Juliana moves from the inner city of Itaúna to the metropolitan town of Contagem in Brazil. While waiting for her husband to join her, she adapts to her new life, meeting people and discovering new horizons, trying to overcome her past.

Juninho, Menor, Neguinho, Adilson and Eldo are young residents of the Bairro Nacional, outskirts of Contagem, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Divided between work and fun, crime and hope, each will have to find ways of overcoming difficulties and taming the tiger inside their veins.