When the house lights faded and the murmur inside the auditorium gave way to darkness in Rio de Janeiro's Cinelândia, Brazilian cinema wrapped up its premiere city showcase of the season. The 28th Festival do Rio concluded on Sunday, October 11, naming the Pernambuco drama A Margem do Rio, directed by Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias, as best fiction feature, while Eryk Rocha's portrait Elza claimed best documentary, according to reporting by newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.
Set in Recife, A Margem do Rio follows a young man wandering across the northeastern city's mangrove swamps after dark in search of casual encounters, until he meets Jeremias, an enigmatic fisherman whose presence blurs the boundary between reality and fantasy. The feature arrived in Rio after securing a special jury prize at Switzerland's Locarno Film Festival, and it affirmed the vitality of contemporary northeastern cinema by also collecting the Felix Award for LGBTQIA+ cinema, alongside trophies for cinematography, sound, and supporting actress, shared by Renna Costa, Artia, and Ísis Broken.
In the documentary competition, director Eryk Rocha constructed Elza around the recorded voice of singer Elza Soares, who passed away in 2022. Rocha stitched archival footage and rare audio recordings together, choosing to let the legendary performer narrate her own nine decades of hardship, resistance, and musical reinvention without conventional talking heads. For a filmmaker dedicated to sensory excavations of Brazilian cultural memory, the film brings Soares's commanding presence back to the city where her path began.
The ceremony also celebrated other defining figures of the contemporary Brazilian screen. Director Gabriel Martins, whose acclaimed Mars One drew international attention, received awards for best fiction direction, best screenplay, and the audience award for best feature with Vicentina Pede Desculpas. The best actress prize resulted in a tie between Grace Passô for A Professora de Francês and Isabel Teixeira for Diário do Fogo. Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli's London won best actor for Di Marco alongside the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) prize, while Maria Luisa Alves's delivery-worker love story Santo took best short film.
As the final speeches ended and the velvet seats of the historic Cinelândia cinema gradually emptied, the festival capped ten days of screenings. The auditorium lights rose once again over the quiet hall, leaving behind an edition defined by intimate inquiries into identity and a clear resolve to safeguard the memory of Brazil's most singular artistic voices.