🎞️ Brazil enters the streaming wars

In one of the world's largest streaming markets, the newest platform on the scene is free of charge, and shows only Brazilian films. Tela Brasil, launched by the federal government on May 30, offers a free catalog of national productions, in an attempt to steer audiences toward homegrown cinema and prop up an audiovisual industry that has been steadily crowded out by foreign giants.

The opening catalog boasts 555 titles spanning productions from 1910 to 2025. For now the service is web-only and requires a login to Gov.br, the government's single sign-on system — used to access thousands of public services online. Android and iOS apps are due within 30 days.

The platform was built by a team of roughly 80 people at the Federal University of Alagoas and is hosted by Serpro, the federal data processing company. It carries no advertising, no subscription fees and no commercial behavioral tracking. More than 300 titles offer audio description, descriptive subtitles and Brazilian sign-language interpretation. 

An agreement with public broadcaster EBC, signed at the launch, will gradually…

Don’t miss out! Upgrade to unlock full access. The process takes only seconds with Apple Pay or Stripe. Become a member.

We’re here for readers who want to truly understand Brazil and Latin America — a region too often ignored or misrepresented by the international media.

Since 2017, our reporting has been powered by paid subscribers. They’re the reason we can keep a full-time team of journalists across Brazil and Argentina, delivering sharp, independent coverage every day.

If you value our work, subscribing is the best way to keep it going — and growing.

You're already a subscriber — which means you've made a choice most people haven't. You decided that understanding Brazil, accurately and ahead of the headlines, was worth paying for. Thank you. That choice is the reason we exist.

Every contribution above your subscription goes directly into journalism: the reporters and editors on the ground in São Paulo, Brasília, and Rio who file what parachute correspondents and recycled-wire intelligence simply can't. It's the difference between covering 2026 and covering it the way it deserves to be covered.

If The Brazilian Report has earned a place in how you read the country, consider giving beyond what you already pay. Whatever the amount, it funds the work — and it keeps it independent.