Festival do Rio 2025: 'A Whale Can Be Torn Apart Like a Samba School' and 'Night Stage' Stand Out

After two weeks and the exhibition of over 300 films from 74 countries, the 27th edition of Festival do Rio, Latin America’s most important cinema festival, has come to a close. In total, I saw 16 features, but two Brazilian titles stood out from the rest. Here are the highlighted picks from this year’s selection:

A Whale Can Be Torn Apart Like a Samba School

Uma Baleia Pode Ser Dilacerada Como Uma Escola de Samba

Dir. Felipe Bragança and Marina Meliande

Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival is one of the biggest and most renowned celebrations on the planet, but behind the elation of street parties that draw millions and the sumptuous parades broadcast worldwide is a universe of a more modest spectacle, organized through the sweat and tears of Samba Schools (Escolas de Samba). These essentially function as both social clubs and sports teams, with over 200 spread throughout the city's neighborhoods and its metropolitan area.

Every year, each school selects a theme and holds a competition to pick a new samba composition that best elaborates on it. Upon selecting a winner, the club, overseen by a carnavalesco, a Carnival director responsible for creative decisions, conceives a parade with the goal to, first and foremost, make its community proud – but also do well when competitively judged against other schools. The final victors receive the chance to climb the ranks into the prestigious first tier.

Developed as part-film, part-art installation, Uma Baleia… portrays the last days of a fictional, bankrupt Samba School through a series of vignettes that represent the elements of a traditional Carnival parade. As a small group works to empty the old barrack and sell the leftover decorations for scrap – including the giant whale float that gives the movie its title – they reflect on the past. Their testimonies are adorned by the surrounding decadence, led by president and owner Capitão Arrábi.

The clear allusions to Herman Melville’s literary classic Moby Dick (one of the helpers is also named Ismael) are only part of the rich cultural tapestry that informs the film’s unorthodox language. Instead of regular dramatic scenes, the distinct sections – all anchored by stunning wide shots functioning at times as tableaux vivants – feature a combination of spoken word poetry, a cappella songs and operatic dream sequences.

Despite the overwhelming beauty of the visuals, this kind of aesthetic potpourri could be taken as excessively mannered and perhaps better suited for museums than cinema screens. However, much like the way some of the finest parades set the erudite and the popular to the same drumbeat, the juxtaposition of the group’s melancholy farewell and the carcasses of yesteryear’s vibrant fantasies is the sentimental foundation that allows the film’s eye candy to transcend the quality of mere elaborate wallpaper.

Near the end, with the whale float packed onto an open truck for the final trip, Arrábi and his crew take a wrong turn in downtown Rio and find themselves passing through the Sambadrome (the avenue-arena that holds the biggest parades). At once a symbol of passion and burden — for Carnival, the city, and life itself — the plastic animal is briefly carried in front of the empty stands, leaving the group to imagine an impossible apotheosis before they turn the corner back into traffic and reality.

A Whale Can Be Torn Apart Like a Samba School won the jury award for best picture in the Caleidoscópio section of Festival de Brasília. It was screened out of competition at Festival do Rio.

Night Stage

Ato Noturno

Dir. Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon

A young actor rehearsing for a play matches with a stranger on Grindr. What was supposed to be a one-night stand grows into a torrid affair. The actor books his first big role as a romantic lead in a TV show, while his fling is revealed to be a politician running for mayor. They try to keep their relationship a secret, but develop a fetish for increasingly daring public sexual acts.

Night Stage spins the trope of closeted queerness into a stylish, neon-soaked erotic thriller about performance. Set in Porto Alegre – a city known for its diverse cultural scene and whose state is currently run by Brazil’s first openly gay governor – the movie is less concerned with a taboo around homosexuality and more with the societal coercion to prune undesirable traits to fit a narrow path of acceptability. Instead of squeaky-clean morality, the writer-director duo Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon keep upping the ante until the layers of pretense – on stage, in public, and between the sheets – finally fracture into bloodshed.

Following the tradition of the subgenre, it’s a project that never sidelines its provocative premise while still taking its characters’ fears and desires seriously. The cinematography, with its deep contrast, vibrant colors and visual nods to master filmmakers (particularly De Palma, in the inspired use of split-screen and POV shots at pivotal moments), elevates the experience to one of a cinematic feast. Furthermore, after all the pent-up energy, the movie delivers a shocking finale that sends everything off on a high note.

At the 2025 Festival do Rio, Ato Noturno won 4 awards: Best Actor (Gabriel Faryas), Best Script (Matzembacher & Reolon), Best Cinematography (Luciana Baseggio), and the Felix Award for best Brazilian production with LGBTQ+ themes. It was acquired out of Berlinale by Dark Star Pictures and Uncork’d Entertainment for theatrical distribution in North America, with no release date set yet.

-Raul