Inside the Brazilian Cinema Revolution: “It’s a Constitutional Right”

When Silvia Cruz, who founded and runs the Brazilian distribution company Vitrine Filmes, started pitching a local new movie called The Secret Agent to exhibitors, she met a ton of skepticism. “They said, ‘Whoa, Silvia, are you sure you’re going to go for it?’” Cruz recalls. The film may have starred one of the country’s biggest stars (Wagner Moura) and hailed from a proven director (Kleber Mendonça Filho), but the nonlinear narrative and 161-minute runtime sounded, to many, like a recipe for commercial failure. Cruz believed in the movie. But she knew these theater-owners to often be right about what would draw a crowd. “I had to prove that the audience was ready,” she says.

She did just that. Mounted on a budget of approximately $5 million, The Secret Agent has sold more than 2.45 million admissions nationally — theatrical numbers are not reported by gross in Brazil, but if translated to standard American ticket prices,…