Welcome to the Rio de Janeiro Int’l Film Festival 2009

Festival do Rio - 11th Rio International Film Festival
24 September - 8 October 2009
www.festivaldorio.com.br

The 11th Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival (Festival do Rio) will take place from Thursday 24 September through Thursday 8 October 2009.
 
Festival do Rio, which first took place in 1999 as a result of the merger of Brazil's two largest film events, Rio Cine Festival (founded in 1984) and Mostra Banco Nacional do Cinema (founded in 1988), is Brazil and South America's largest film festival and industry event. It receives massive media attention throughout Brazil and much of South America.
 
In the 2008 edition 350 films were screened from 60 countries at 30 venues around Rio de Janeiro, and over 220 thousand spectators attended the festival.

The Festival has ten regular international programmes: World Panorama; Expectation; Limits and Frontiers; Archive Treasures; Generation; Dox; Latin Docs; Midnight Movies; Gay and Pocket Films. And every year a country is chosen to be honoured with a special focus programme. In 2008, the United Kingdom was the Focus.

Première Brasil: Best of Brazil

Première Brasil, which makes its festival home at the historic Odeon BR cinema in downtown Rio de Janeiro, is a showcase of contemporary Brazilian cinema. In 2008 Première Brasil screened 64 new Brazilian works.
 
The films in Première Brasil are presented in three programmes: features, documentaries and shorts. It is the only competitive section of Festival do Rio with seven jury awards given out on the festival's closing night. Three highly prized audience awards are also given out for best Brazilian feature film, best documentary and best short film.
 

Industry Focus

While the main part of the festival is targeted towards the resident Brazilian public, Festival do Rio also has a very strong industry section, Rio Market, with seminars, Master Classes, one-to-one scheduled meetings, and networking events covering both film, home entertainment and television.
 
The festival is used by distributors, including the major studios, to launch films on the Brazilian market and has also been used successfully by international sales companies to place films not yet sold to Brazil in front of the main Brazilian buyers. The majority of Brazilian film and television industry executives attend Festival do Rio, as do buyers from throughout Latin America. The festival is arguably the best shop window in South America for independent productions.
 

The Brazilian Audiovisual Market

Annually Brazil sells more than 93-million cinema tickets, 90% of which are for international productions. Around 350 films are released each year in Brazil of which around 75 will be Brazilian productions. Of the films released in 2006, 145 came from the main Hollywood studios while 119 were independent productions. Of the independent productions 57% were from North America and 34% from Europe.