In the New York Times, Larry Rohter writes about last year's biggest box-office hit in Brazil, 2 Filhos de Francisco / Two Sons of Francisco. Directed by Breno Silveira, the film tells the rags-to-riches story of two poor rural boys — Zezé and Luciano di Camargo — who grew up to become one of Brazil's biggest sertanejo (the national "country music") singers. Two Sons of Francisco is Brazil's submission for the 2006 best foreign language film Academy Award.
Rohter's article is quite readable, though I do have a couple of quibbles with it. To the best of my knowledge, the current Brazilian president, generally known by his nickname, Lula, was never really a peasant. He was born in the rural Northeast, but his family migrated to the industrial south when he was still a small child. Also, the article never explains why the Portuguese-speaking sertanejo singers cut a Spanish-language record in English-speaking Nashville. (Are they trying to break into the Spanish-language market? Are they already famous in Spanish-speaking countries?)
In the last five years at least two Brazilian films set in the poverty-stricken Northeast — Andrucha Waddington's Eu Tu Eles / Me You Them and Walter Salles' Abril Despedaçado / Behind the Sun — opened commercially in Los Angeles. Even though most Brazilian films depict the lives of working- or middle-class urban Brazilians, I can't think of a single internationally renowned Brazilian movie in the last several years that was set anywhere besides Rio's slums or the Northeastern hinterlands.
I should add that Two Sons of Francisco has also created a political furor.
If it weren't enough that his Labor Party is at the core of what may well be the worst corruption scandal in Brazil's history — and that is saying a lot — Lula was caught watching a pirated DVD while aboard his private jet during a Moscow-Brasília flight last October. The Brazilian president later expressed his regret over the incident, stating that he is friends with the two singers.
Addendum: If Two Sons of Francisco becomes an international hit, I'll have to add "Midwestern hinterlands" to my shortlist above. I'd like to thank Welington Liberato for pointing that out to me.
2 Filhos de Francisco is not set in northeast of Brasil, is set in center-west, close to Brasilia, our capital, and the vegetation, culture and people are quite different. In this terms, Larry Rohter is right.