Leeds International Film Festival shines spotlight on Brazilian cinema

Pixote - a film about Brazilian street children is one of the films showing during LIFF 2025

This weekend, cinemagoers in Leeds are in for a treat as the Leeds International Film Festival shines a spotlight on Brazilian cinema, in partnership with the Centre for World Cinemas at the University of Leeds.

Deslocamentos: Brazilian Cinema on the Move, reflects literal and metaphorical movements and displacements within Brazilian society, particularly concerning regional identity, geography, and power structures.

In the restored classic Iracema, the Trans-Amazonian Highway symbolises the displacement of people by state-led modernisation and exploitation of the Amazon.

In other atmospheric road movies, Bye Bye Brazil follows a circus troupe through a rapidly modernising country and Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures witnesses the effects of the Second World War reaching even the Brazilian outback.

In Hills of Disorder, a displaced indigenous man roams the hinterlands for a decade. Macunaima presents an extraordinary mythic fable of transformation and Pixote is a searing indictment of the marginalisation of São Paulo’s street children.

The films will be screened between Friday 31 October and Monday 3rd November 2025.