As São Paulo-based development and training hub BrLab prepares for its 15th anniversary edition in 2026, one of Latin America’s most influential project labs has opened submissions and announced a number of changes aimed at expanding its scope, deepening its support for emerging talent and pushing sustainability up the region’s agenda.
The 15th BrLab will be held mainly in São Paulo from April 7th to 14th, with satellite activities in Brasilia and Recife. Producers, directors and screenwriters from across Latin America, Spain and Portugal gather for a week of labs, market encounters and open industry programs.
Applications for the four 2026 workshops (BrLab Features, BrLab Rough Cuts, BrLab Audience Design, and the new BrLab Kids) are free and will be accepted on the Lab’s website from November 12 to December 12, 2025.
“For us, each edition is an opportunity to identify what is being imagined across the region,” says Rafael Sampaio, founder, director and curator of BrLab. “The industry trusts us to bring new ideas to the table every year.”
Founded in 2011 and hosted by Klaxon Cultura Audiovisual, BrLab has grown from a small workshop with a special focus on Latin America to a compact but influential platform, more of a training hub than a full-fledged marketplace, firmly embedded in the regional calendar of projects seeking to strengthen creative and financial strategies.
It is supported by institutions such as the Ibermedia program, Projeto Paradiso, Spcine, and now includes Petrobras as a multi-year sponsor. BrLab receives over 400 submissions a year, carefully selected by a professional selection committee.
As of 2025, 62 feature films have been produced and released that have passed through the Institute’s various sections, with 17 more in post-production and 10 more funded for production through 2026. By next year, the total number of completed films related to the lab is expected to approach 90.
Many of his works have premiered at prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Berlin, San Sebastian, Locarno, Sundance, and Toronto. His recent masterpieces include “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” which won the top prize in the Cannes “Un Certain Regard” category. “Levante” (Cannes Critics’ Week 2023); “Légua” screened at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. Sundance title “Los Tiburones.” “Las Heiresses” is a multiple prize winner at the Berlinale Competition. San Sebastian Golden Shell Award Winner “Los Reyes del Mundo”. “The Wolf Behind the Door”, selected in the inaugural edition of BrLab in 2011, has since bowed in Toronto and San Sebastian, announcing new talent to track Fernando Coimbra.
Avoid crowded fall festival hallways
Starting with this 15th edition, BrLab has moved completely from its traditional October slot to early April. The move is aimed at avoiding crowded fall festival venues and giving projects more time to polish scripts and cuts ahead of release in the second half of this year.
“This change creates a more convenient rhythm for project development,” Sampaio says. “We want our selected teams to make the most of the international circuit and April is well-positioned to make that happen, especially for Rough Cut Lab.”
In 2021, BrLab launched BrLab CoPro, a curated boutique co-production forum aimed at activating new partnerships with Brazil and the rest of Latin America. The forum invites producers, funds, distributors and broadcasters looking to build cross-border packages at a time when co-production has become essential for financing and distribution.
This platform deepens BrLab’s role as a connection not only to talent, but also to institutions and industry players who can actually produce films.
Flagship Lab and Audience Design
The backbone of the program remains the BrLab feature, with a focus on fiction features that include Latin America plus Spain and Portugal. The 12 projects will receive scriptwriting, directing, production and distribution guidance from regional heavyweights. Long-time supporter Programa Ibermedia, a partner since the first edition, will once again offer participation grants to selected teams.
Running in parallel, BrLab Rough Cut accommodates fiction and documentary works from around the Ibero-American world during the editing stage, pairing each project with editing instructors and a small group of peers to help fine-tune cuts and position films for festivals, sales, and distribution.
After an initial phase focused on Brazil, BrLab’s audience design program is back with a broader scope and now extends throughout Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Inspired by a methodology that Sampaio first encountered at the Torino Film Lab, the workshop will help the team think strategically about audiences from the development stage, allowing them to map core and secondary audiences and plan release paths that combine festivals, theaters, platforms and alternative circuits.
“Everyone in Brazil talks about ‘creating new audiences,’ but for years people have been cut off from our films. They just haven’t been educated to see themselves on screen,” Sampaio explained. “That’s why we need spaces like BrLab, where we can develop and protect Latin American stories and histories without taking our eyes off the market, because being represented on screen is a right.”
Kids Lab in Recife
The biggest new innovation currently announced for 2026 is BrLab Kids, a new workshop dedicated to films and series projects aimed at children and young audiences, which will be rolled out in Recife. The initiative is in response to what Sampaio sees as a chronic lack of specific public policy and institutional support for children’s content in Brazil and many parts of Latin America.
“If children don’t grow up watching Latin American stories, they won’t feel connected to our history and films as adults,” he argued.
Projects selected for BrLab Kids will receive guidance from authors specializing in young readers, such as Janaina Tokitaka and Gabriela Mancini, along with educational consultants. Recife-based producer Nara Aragao will oversee production guidance.
For Sampaio, the kids division goes hand-in-hand with its audience design push, providing a space to address the challenges of family titles competing with US studio fare while seeking to build a loyal local audience seeking regional stories.
Green initiatives with Petrobras
Supported for the first time by Petrobras as presentation partner and lead sponsor, the 15th edition of BrLab will also begin promoting sustainability. The institute, overseen by green production pioneer Ariane Ferreira, has teamed up with the Cinema Verde Festival to form the think tank BrLab Petrobras. The initiative is an effort to adapt emerging international environmental standards to Latin American realities and encourage local institutions to incorporate environmental standards into film funding.
Sampaio pointed to new European reports and incentives for greener film and television production, but stressed that Latin America is starting from a different baseline. The aim, he said, was to convene the industry around practical measures that could be phased in in the region.
“Often, the only real green efforts in our region are big international streamer shows that are delivered on their own protocols,” he says. “If we can try out ideas in the audiovisual field, we have the potential to bring about change in other parts of society.”
Brazil’s recovering co-production hub
The 15th edition of BrLab follows a new momentum in Brazilian cinema. After years of financing paralysis, minority co-production plans are making a comeback and Brazil is once again quickly becoming a popular partner for major projects in Latin America, often in combination with European finance.
“Today, foreign projects can come to BrLab and find co-producers from Brazilian minorities,” Sampaio points out. “When we started, Ibermedia was virtually the only avenue for collaboration. Now that we have multiple funds, the Lab has become a natural meeting place.”
Audience design session at BrLab 2019
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