Nine films by European women+ filmmakers are part of this year’s EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM programme at Festival do Rio (1–11 October 2026). Presented by European Film Promotion (EFP) in partnership with the festival, the selection brings together established directors and emerging voices from across Europe. Their films explore intimacy, responsibility and belonging through a broad range of cinematic perspectives. Festival do Rio is one of the programme’s three international partner festivals, alongside Sydney and Busan.
EFP Future Frames alumna Anna Roller returns with her second feature, Allegro Pastell (Germany), a portrait of a long-distance relationship drained of vitality and marked by ruptures. With quiet precision, Roller observes a generation struggling to take risks, embrace spontaneity and connect - with their own feelings as much as with one another.
Dua (Switzerland, Kosovo, France), the second feature by Blerta Basholli, a gripping depiction of growing up in wartimes and more relevant than ever, is set in Prishtina in the late 1990s as war looms and ethnic tensions escalate. Thirteen-year-old Dua navigates adolescence in a world shaped by violence, persecution and the threat of exile.
In Eva (Italy), Emanuela Rossi shines a light to the various layers of motherhood, as she follows a mysterious woman living in the forest who sets a field of sunflowers on fire, claiming that children are in danger and must be protected. Somehow her case becomes linked to a series of unexplained disappearances.
Invisible family bonds through generational conflict are the leading motive in Forever Your Maternal Animal (Belgium, France, Mexico) by Valentina Maurel. We follow the main character Elsa as she returns to Costa Rica after years in Europe, where she finds her younger sister increasingly withdrawn, while their mother is absorbed in the republication of the erotic poetry of her youth.
Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster (Austria, Germany, France), depicts a woman in the aftermath of her world falling apart. Concert pianist Lucy has a picture-perfect life when she moves with her family to the idyllic countryside. But the picture shatters when her husband is suddenly arrested over deeply disturbing allegations.
With her feature debut Là Gradiva (France, Italy), Marine Atlan brings a group of French high-school students to Naples and Pompeii, where desire, anger and uncertainty surface amid the traces of ancient catastrophe, creating a vivid generational portrait that places past and present, strangeness and familiarity in vivid dialogue.
Secret desires and lifelong secrets: The Roses of Marrakesh (Italy, Morocco, France), the third feature by Ginevra Elkann, unfolds on a secluded estate outside Marrakesh. Leila, who has spent years caring for an elderly French aristocrat, shares an unspoken bond with gardener Yusef. When her sister brings news of the son Leila was forced to give up as a teenager, her carefully ordered world begins to unravel.
In Maria Sødahl’s The Last Resort (Denmark, Norway) a family is being tested on their compassion and humanitarian believes, as their family holiday takes a dramatic turn. After an accident Mikkel and Louise decide to help the injured man, an Afghan refugee. Sødahl turns the encounter into an examination of compassion and the distance between professed values and the risks people are prepared to take for others.
Truly Naked (The Netherlands, Belgium, France) is the compelling feature debut of Muriel d’Ansembourg. Alec, a quiet teenager raised inside his father’s small-scale pornography business, meets Nina after moving to a seaside town. D’Ansembourg captures the current societal discussions around the mechanics of filmed sexuality with genuine vulnerability and the urgent desire for authentic connection.
German filmmaker Anna Roller (Allegro Pastell), Danish director Maria Sødahl (The Last Resort), Italian director Ginevra Elkann (The Roses of Marrakesh), and Spanish filmmaker Maria Martinez Bayona (The End of It) will travel to Festival do Rio, meeting local festival audiences for Q&As and taking part in a range of festival events.
Festival do Rio and EFP will also host a dedicated networking dinner, bringing together the four European filmmakers and Latin American film professionals for an evening of exchange and new connections. A key highlight will be the International Women+ Roundtable at RioMarket, where the visiting directors will join Jana Wolff of the Berlinale European Film Market alongside Brazilian talents: actress Ana Flavia Cavalcanti, who appears in Baby by Marcelo Caetano; filmmaker Galba Gogóia, director of Jéssika; and actress and associate producer Shirlene Paixão, from A Matéria Noturna by Bernard Lessa. Under the title “Mapping the Industry Through Women’s Perspectives: Voices, Experiences, and Connections,” the conversation will explore shared experiences, diverse perspectives and gender-related challenges in the filmmaking profession.
EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM connects European women and genderqueer filmmakers with audiences and industry professionals at key international festivals. In collaboration with the Sydney Film Festival, the Busan International Film Festival and Festival do Rio, the programme supports the international visibility of European films and filmmakers beyond Europe.
The programme is made possible thanks to the support of Creative Europe – the MEDIA Programme of the European Union.
The national film promotion institutes supporting this year’s edition of EUROPE! VOICES OF WOMEN+ IN FILM at Festival do Rio are Austrian Films, Cinecittà (Italy), Danish Film Institute, German Films, SEE NL (The Netherlands), Swiss Films, Unifrance, and Wallonie Bruxelles Images. Cineuropa is the programme’s media partner.
