São Paulo International Film Festival
Official logo of the 37th edition
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| Location | São Paulo, Brazil |
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| Founded | 1977 |
| Language | International |
| Website | http://www.mostra.org |
The São Paulo International Film Festival (Portuguese: Mostra Internacional de São Paulo), also known internationally as Mostra, is an annual film festival held in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. A non-profit event, the festival is organized by ABMIC (Associação Brasileira Mostra Internacional de Cinema). The state and city of São Paulo have established October as the festival's official month.
The festival was created in 1977 when film critic Leon Cakoff decided to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). The head of the museum’s film department, Cakoff had already organized successful screenings of rare foreign films during the 1970s. These pre-festival screenings had a large audience turnout, including films that came without Portuguese subtitles and sometimes with no translation at all, proving the strength of the city’s cultural demand.
The 1st São Paulo International Film Festival included 16 feature films and 7 shorts, representing 17 countries in total. Consisting of 40 screenings at the MASP's Grand Auditorium, the first edition inaugurated the Audience Prize, with members of the audience voting for the best picture, a ritual that has been followed ever since. The winner of the first Audience Prize was Hector Babenco's Lucio Flavio (1977), a Brazilian production. The Jornal do Brasil news publication noted that the festival was the only place in the country where people had the right to vote.
Brazil was under military dictatorship at the time, causing a lot of difficulties with the censors during the festival’s first seven years while it was still held at the MASP. Films often had to be screened to a censorship committee before being shown to the public and transportation difficulties sometimes forced the prints to arrive in Brazil inside diplomatic luggage with the aid of embassies and consulates. After leaving the museum in 1984, the festival stood up to the censors and began a legal battle for the right to screen the films directly to the public, with no prior censorship interference.
The 8th edition of the festival was marked by the strongest clash against the government. The festival won the appeal in 1984, the last year of the dictatorship, and it began seemingly free from the censors. However, the event was suspended in the middle of the first week after a screening of Wim Wenders' The State of Things (1982). The interruption, which received large international coverage, lasted for four days, enough time for the Ministry of Justice’s censorship board to watch all of the films.
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