Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on May 30 at Rio2C the launch of Tela Brasil, a free public streaming platform designed to showcase Brazilian audiovisual works and help audiences connect more closely with national culture. The service is available to anyone with a Gov.br account, the Brazilian federal government’s official digital platform, and launches with a catalog of 555 productions spanning more than a century of local content, from 1910 to 2025.
Tela Brasil’s initial lineup includes 139 feature films, 85 medium-length films or television movies, 267 short films and 64 series. Lula said the platform is intended to strengthen Brazilians’ understanding of their own country and celebrate the breadth of national artistic production. He described the catalog as a vibrant selection that reflects Brazil’s cultural richness.
The announcement was made during a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro attended by film and TV industry representatives and government officials, including Culture Minister Margareth Menezes, Rio Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere and interim Rio state governor Ricardo Couto. During the event, the Ministry of Culture and the Brazilian Communication Company, known as EBC, signed an agreement to add EBC’s catalog of more than 150 titles, totaling about 3,000 hours of programming, to Tela Brasil. That collection includes the long-running talk show “Sem Censura,” along with a range of films and television content.
Among the feature films already listed on the platform are several landmark Brazilian titles, including Glauber Rocha’s “Black God, White Devil” (1964), Cacá Diegues’ “Xica da Silva” (1976), Suzana Amaral’s “Hour of the Star” (1985), Fábio Barreto’s Oscar-nominated “O Quatrilho” (1995), Bruno Barreto’s Oscar-nominated “Four Days in September” (1997), Hector Babenco’s “Carandiru” (2003), Jayme Monjardim’s “Olga” (2004) and Lúcia Murat’s “Almost Brothers” (2005). The selection underscores the government’s effort to preserve and promote important works from Brazil’s film and television history.
The federal government invested 9 million reais, or about $1.8 million, in 2024 and 2025 to build Tela Brasil. That funding covered content licensing, technology development, accessibility features, curation and project management. The Ministry of Culture and the Federal University of Alagoas developed the platform’s technology.
Lula linked the initiative to broader cultural and economic goals, saying culture expands horizons and that Brazilians should have access to everything they create. He argued that the country should be proud to present its own artistic output and use culture as part of a wider transformation toward greater independence and self-definition.
At the ceremony, Industry, Commerce and Services Minister Márcio Elias Rosa said the audiovisual sector has been included in Nova Indústria Brasil, the government’s main industrial development program. He said a working group has identified 11 priorities for the sector and noted that audiovisual accounts for 0.6% of Brazil’s GDP while generating more than 680,000 direct jobs. The government’s goal is to raise that share to 1%.
Rosa also said the government will hold a seminar on June 17 with representatives from federal public banks Caixa Econômica Federal, BNDES and Banco do Brasil, along with other institutions such as Finep, to design credit lines tailored to the audiovisual industry.
