Brazilian cinema is riding an unprecedented wave of Oscar glory, and San Francisco is about to get its own front-row seat. The first San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival opens September 24 and runs through September 27 at the Vogue Theatre in Presidio Heights, packing 16 films — 11 features and five shorts — into four days at $20 per program.
The festival's timing could hardly be more pointed. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, founder Zanna de Sant'anna built the event independently to bring Brazilian cinema to San Francisco beyond just the local Brazilian community. That community is sizable: the Bay Area is home to an estimated 35,000 Brazilian immigrants, the second-largest concentration in California behind Greater Los Angeles, according to Soul Brasil.
Brazilian films have landed Best Picture Oscar nominations in consecutive years, per the Chronicle's reporting, a streak few national cinemas can claim. Walter Salles's *I'm Still Here* won Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards in early 2025, becoming the first Brazilian film ever to win an Oscar in that category, according to TIME. The film, directed by Salles in 2024, adapted Marcelo Rubens Paiva's memoir about his mother's resistance during Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship and also received a Best Picture nomination.
A Cannes Winner Joins the Lineup
Kleber Mendonça Filho's political thriller *The Secret Agent* followed with its own haul: four 2026 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor, after being the most awarded film at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, according to Film at Lincoln Center. Moura plays Marcelo, a former professor and researcher whose true identity is concealed in 1977 Recife.
That debut, *Marighella*, dramatizes the guerrilla leader who led armed resistance against Brazil's military regime, and the film faced a two-year release delay in Brazil due to government censorship under the Bolsonaro administration, according to the World Socialist Web Site. Together with *I'm Still Here* and *The Secret Agent*, it forms a throughline running across the festival: Brazilian filmmakers repeatedly turning to the dictatorship era to examine historical memory and speak to present-day political dynamics.
An Epic Opener and a Restored Classic to Close
The festival opens with *I Only Rest in the Storm*, a Luso-Franco-Brazilian co-production directed by Paulo Pinho. Per the Chronicle, it's a 3.5-hour epic following a young Portuguese environmental engineer who works for an NGO and travels to Guinea-Bissau to study the impact of a new road. Its English title comes from a lyric in a song by Brazilian musician Tom Zé, according to the Instituto Moreira Salles.
The festival closes on a very different note: a 4K restoration of Walter Salles's 1998 drama *Central Station*. Fernanda Torres would go on to star in Salles's *I'm Still Here* nearly three decades later, linking the festival's closing night directly to its opening-night context of Brazil's ongoing awards surge.
A Berlinale Winner Rounds Out the Slate
Also on the bill is *Gugu's World*, about a young boy navigating a difficult childhood.
The Inffinito Brazilian Film Festival is marking its 30th anniversary. That milestone places the festival within a broader conversation about Brazilian cinema.
A Festival Screen in Presidio Heights
The venue itself provides the festival's setting. The Vogue Theatre is the festival's venue. The Balboa Theater is another San Francisco movie theater.
