Brazilian cinema is having a moment. A new S.F. film festival shows why

The San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival includes “Gugu’s World,” a film about a young boy with a challenging childhood, Brazil’s official entry into the 2027 Academy Awards.

Cleo Diára, left, and Sérgio Coragem in the Brazilian film “I Only Rest in the Storm,” a 3½-hour epic about a Portuguese environmental engineer who accepts a position in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.

“Central Station” (1998), directed by Walter Salles, stars Fernanda Montenegro, right, who was nominated for an Oscar, and Marília Pêra, is set to be screened during the inaugural San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival.

Brazilian cinema is back on the world stage after first Walter Salles’ 2024 drama “I’m Still Here” then last year’s art house hit, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent,” scored best picture Oscar nominations in consecutive years.

San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival: Thursday-Sunday, Sept. 24-27. $20 per program. Vogue Theater, 3290 Sacramento St., S.F. www.cinemabrazil.org

Now, as if on cue, the first San Francisco Brazilian Film Festival has arrived at the Vogue Theater for a deeper dive into this fascinating culture’s worldview.

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“I built this festival independently because I wanted to bring Brazilian cinema to San Francisco in a way that goes beyond the Brazilian community — to introduce Bay Area audiences to the incredible filmmakers, stories, cultures and voices coming out of Brazil,” Cinema Brazil founder Zanna de Sant’Anna told the Chronicle.

The festival opens ambitiously with “I Only Rest in the Storm,” a 3½-hour epic about a Portuguese environmental engineer who accepts a position in Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, where the experience proves eye-opening.

It closes with a 4K restoration of Salles’ 1998 masterpiece “Central Station,” in which a bitter middle-aged woman (Oscar-nominated Fernanda Montenegro) forms an unlikely bond with a boy after his mother is killed.

Also included in the 16-film lineup — 11 features, five shorts — is “Gugu’s World,” about another young boy with a challenging childhood, which is Brazil’s official entry into the 2027 Academy Awards.