Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.screendaily.com
Brazilian producer Tatiana Leite has revealed details of her new slate at the 28th Festival do Rio (October 1-11), where her company Bubbles Project has four titles in selection, including Nepal’s international feature Oscar submission Elephants In The Fog.
Besides Abinash Bikram Shah’s feature debut and Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize winner, the festival roster includes the world premieres in Première Brasil of Guilherme Coelho’s Oceanic and Fabio Meira’s documentary The Extraordinary Life Of Vera Valdez, alongside Mia Lima Rocha’s short film Tag.
“I’m drawn to projects that make me dream or make me think, whether through a family story or a political perspective,” says Rio-based Leite, who spent nearly a decade as an international programmer at the festival before she founded Bubbles Project in 2012.
Leite tends to board films early. “Sometimes I can see it in a short made with friends over a weekend — there’s something in the filmmaker’s vision that intrigues me and makes me want to follow them,” she says.
That was the case with Shah’s dramatic thriller Elephants In The Fog, set within a transgender community in the South Asian country. Leite encountered the project while serving on a film fund commission and, in the absence of a Brazil-Nepal co-production treaty, got to work. She pulled it together with backing from France and Germany as a co-production involving Nepal’s Underground Talkies, Bubbles Project and Enquadramento Filmes from Brazil, France’s Les Valseurs, Germany’s Die Gesellschaft and Zischlermann Filmproduktion, and Norway’s Storm Films.
The Nepal shoot went smoothly, wild elephants notwithstanding. Leite recalls Brazilian sound technician Pedro Sá Earp calling to “say goodbye” before filming a scene involving the animals. “He was very afraid,” she says with a laugh. Earp survived and the film won Cannes’ Best Sound Creation Award.
Bubbles Project made Oceanic, a political thriller about a scientist trying to save alcoholics while tackling crime, with frequent Brazilian co-production partner Matizar Filmes and Flammable Cinema. The Extraordinary Life Of Vera Valdez, from Roseira Filmes and Bubbles Project, charts the actress’s journey from modelling for Dior and Coco Chanel to her imprisonment and torture during Brazil’s military dictatorship. Tag follows two women who revisit an unresolved episode.
Public funding upheaval
Leite says Brazil is enjoying a strong period for international co-production, with new minority and bilateral funds opening doors to more countries. However she remains wary after years of upheaval in public film funding.
“I’m usually an optimistic person, but we are in serious danger,” Leite says. “This goes far beyond what we do as minority or majority producers. It could threaten film funding in Brazil, cultural funding more broadly and even human rights. Ultimately, we are facing a threat to our democracy.” With a presidential run-off scheduled for October 25, Leite says “the future is not assured” for independent Brazilian cinema.
Nonetheless, Bubbles Project’s international slate continues to grow. In the pipeline are Venezuelan filmmaker Michael Labarca’s emigration drama Kids Swimming In The Lake, a Venezuela-Brazil-France-Chile-Germany co-production scheduled to shoot from early November in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
The company recently wrapped Miguel Gomes’ war drama Savagery (Selvajaria) in Bahia alongside Matizar Filmes. Portugal’s Uma Pedra No Sapato is lead producer alongside partners from France, Italy, the Netherlands, and China.
Leite is also reuniting with Brazilian filmmaker Julia Murat, whose 2022 Locarno’s Golden Leopard winner Rule 34 she produced alongside Esquina Filmes and France’s Still Moving. Their new development project, White Masks, is described as a personal musical exploring Brazil’s sociopolitical fabric. Leite calls it “as daring as Rule 34, but in a more political way”.
Since inception, Bubbles Project’s credits have included María Alché and Benjamín Naishtat’s 2023 San Sebastián prize-winning Puan, Pedro Freire’s 2024 Sundance selection Malu, and Pedro Pinho’s I Only Rest In The Storm, which won best actress in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2025.
As she oversees a “small but mighty” team of five across writing, editing and other creative decisions, Leite reflects on her mission. “The idea was to have a project about making films that still make a difference in people’s lives when they see them,” she says.
Returning to Festival do Rio, where her career began, resonates. “Showing films to this audience in particular gives me more energy to keep making films,” she says.
