Rodrigo Teixeira, the producer of the 2025 Oscar-winner I’m Not There, and James Gray’s 2026 Cannes nominee Paper Tiger, are collaborating on a fourth film in development for production in 2027.
“We’re talking about the United States right now, not at its best moment with perhaps the worst president in the world,” Teixeira said Wednesday in a master class held at Madrid’s ECAM Forum international co-production market.
“This is a very difficult time for America, but I also think it’s a great opportunity, because terrible times are good times for art.
That’s difficult to do in the US. Because the people who fund[the films]are in some way aligned with this government funding. “Directors are going to have to make films outside of the United States. American directors are going to come to Brazil to make films in Brazil. We need to help them just as they help us,” Teixeira added. No independent film in America or any country or anywhere in the world can be self-sufficient.
It’s actually already happening. Teixeira, a special guest at the ECAM Forum in Madrid, has just completed Michael Almereyda’s Don DeLillo’s Zero K. The film follows a tech billionaire (Peter Sarsgaard) as he prepares his young, dying wife (Inga Ebsdotter Lileas) to be frozen in a state-of-the-art medical facility. Caleb Landry Jones plays the son of a billionaire who struggles to connect with his partner (Severance’s Britt Lauer) and his son.
The main cast of “Zero K’s” is primarily American and international. “Zero K,” which wrapped on June 6, was shot entirely in Sao Paulo, Teixeira’s hometown and the home of his production label RT Features.
“By shooting American films, French films, Belgian films and Spanish films in Brazil, we can provide great production values for less money, because we have great technicians. Brazilian cinema is at its peak. We are making great films. Brazilian technicians are film lovers. They are great artists,” Teixeira told Variety.
Teixeira’s presentation at the ECAM Forum comes at a special time for him and his company. A special feature on RT who is turning 20 years old. Teixeira will turn 50 in December of this year. So he used the talk to reflect on his past, the world’s present, and where the global film industry is headed.
“Down-to-earth science fiction,” Teixeira said, and “Zero K” was written by Almereyda, the Alfred P. Sloan feature film Sundance winner for “Marjorie Prime” (2017) and “Tesla” (2020). is produced by RT Features, Keep Your Head and Oak Street Pictures.
It also forms part of a larger industry picture. “Peter Sarsgaard and Caleb Landry Jones are American, Inga Ybsdotter Lileas is Norwegian, Selton Mello is Brazilian, Geza Roerig is Hungarian, the director and cinematographer is American, and the producer and costume designer is Brazilian,” Teixeira said. “This film highlights a whole new mix with Brazil, and every country has this new blend, and it’s a beautiful blend,” he added.
“We’re much more global now. What’s going on in the world is a movement, it’s a geopolitical movement. The film landscape is much more international now than Hollywood. Hollywood is much more streaming and blockbuster now, and independent films are international,” Teixeira told Variety. “So independent film production will either feature cooperation between the U.S. and other countries, or countries alone,” he told Variety. “Original projects, even American projects, are all in this global place. The first time you see this is at a festival, and then you go to this crazy awards season, and you travel all over the place like a rock band, and ultimately you have to convince people to be on your side.”
Teixeira should know. Since launching RT Features in 2006, there are few producers outside the United States who have been able to consistently support and successfully support American independent film icons.
The breakthrough, he said in Madrid, was director Noah Baumbach’s “Francis Ha.”
Teixeira finances his own films, a rarity in Latin American cinema. He was given the opportunity to donate $500,000 to produce “Francis Ha.” Although Teixeira loved Baumbach’s films, he didn’t know about his partner, the then-unknown Greta Gerwig, or about the other main cast member, ex-Marine Adam Driver, who was to make the American TV movie. Also, the movie will be made in black and white.
However, Teixeira was already immersed in low-budget filmmaking after his second Brazilian feature, Hector Daria’s Drained. This work is an edgy obsession drama directed by the young Selton Melo, who had already become a TV novel megastar in Brazil. Teixeira made back 10 times his investment.
“I thought, Okay, here’s something. I know how to do it. This is easy for me. And I was learning. Noah Baumbach was, for me, the leading manager at the time,” he recalled. Baumbach showed him the cut on June 12, 2012, and Teixeira remembers that date. “When I saw this movie on the screen, I knew I had succeeded. I felt the same way I felt when I saw ‘Drain’ for the first time.”
Teixeira said the audience reaction to “Francis Ha” was “unbelievable” when it made its world premiere on the big screen in the basketball arena at the Telluride Festival. And Teixeira, who spent his early career as a film developer, suddenly found himself recognized as a film producer in the United States.
During his tenure, Teixeira has worked with Kelly Reichardt (Night Moves, 2013), Ira Sachs (Love Is Strange, 2015, Little Men, 2016), Robber Eggers (The Witch, 2015; The Lighthouse, 2019) and again Baumbach (Mistress America, 2016). In 2014, he co-founded the Film Fund for New Directors with Martin Scorsese Sikelia.
However, since Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” which was nominated for Best Picture and won Best Adapted Screenplay at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018, Teixeira has further expanded his range of activities, working with James Gray and He has produced three films: Ad Astra (2019), Armageddon Time (2022), and Paper Tiger, as well as Olivier Assayas’ The Wasp Network. (2019) “Bergman Island” directed by Mia Hansen-Love, 2021).
Most notably, he produced I’m Still Here, directed by Walter Salles, with VideoFilmes and MACT. The film was the first Brazilian-Portuguese language film by a Brazilian director to be nominated for Best Picture and win the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
In addition to Zero K, RT Features’ upcoming schedule also features Glaxo, directed by Argentina’s Benjamin Neistadt and starring Lali Esposito, Esteban Ramote, Esteban Viriardi and Marcelo Subiotto, and República Luminosa, the new dramatic thriller from Guatemalan director Jeiro Bustamante. Teixeira made the announcement to Variety on Wednesday, just before a master class for his new film “Body of Summer,” directed by Argentina’s Fundación Iván. RT Features is also in post-production on “Wolves,” directed by Rami Kodei, which is inspired by the real-life collapse of the Lebanese banking system in 2019.
In 2025, Teixeira shot eight films, two of which were shot in Brazil and Romania, and one in the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Lebanon. In 2026, “I’m planning to shoot my first Asian film in Cambodia, and I might bring a film by a New York-based Singaporean director as an American film and shoot it in Brazil.” That coincides with one of Teixeira’s future missions.
“I’m trying to internationalize Brazilian engineers. As a producer, it’s part of my job to introduce these engineers to the world. Now that I’m 50, I’m able to do that much more and introduce them to other audiences. I love it. That’s my new moment. I’d be happy to do that for a while. If I could, I would.”
Teixeira’s international expansion reflects a major shift in the finances of independent film and his own personal passions, he confessed at the ECAM forum. Teixeira loves to travel, both literally and figuratively. He will be filming Bustamante’s “República Luminosa”. Because that matches the problem with this movie.
Also: “Why? I’ve never been to Guatemala,” he told the ECAM forum, discussing how he chooses his projects – I follow my instincts – and his responsibilities as a producer – “taking the bullet for the director.”
“In the ’80s, I was obsessed with National Geographic because it allowed me to travel by reading the magazine,” Teixeira said in Madrid. “Right now I’m traveling to make movies. I’m going to Guatemala to make movies. I’ve traveled to the moon, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus with James Gray. Movies take me back to the 18th century. That’s what movies give me. I travel through time, space and countries. That’s the best for me. I couldn’t have had a better life.”
