FID:RIO is the new International Documentary Film Festival based in Rio de Janeiro, inspired by the spirit that established FIDBA as the largest documentary festival in Latin America. In its second edition, FID:RIO is projected as a meeting place for real-life cinema, where works with a shared vocation for reflection, formal exploration, and a critical perspective on the world we inhabit coexist. Organized by the same team as FIDBA Buenos Aires.
From this premise, FID:RIO presents itself as an annual event that combines a selection of films from new directors with retrospectives of established authors, as well as the recovery of essential works that remain outside the commercial circuit. The festival is a platform open to all documentary languages and all forms that interrogate reality and seek to understand it through cinema.
FID:RIO also seeks to expand the film experience to other languages and formats, opening up a dialogue between documentary and other disciplines: from photography to installations, from documentary theater to transmedia storytelling, and from traditional storytelling to new digital platforms. At this intersection of reality and fiction, documentary appears as an irreplaceable form of contemporary thought.
In a world where markets tend to turn every connection into spectacle, documentary reaffirms its uniqueness: it works with the uncertain, the unstable, the unpredictable. And this fragility is precisely its strength. Documentary invents forms, builds new maps, and explores territories we don't yet fully understand.
LINK:RIO is the industry space of FID:RIO, a direct heir to the work consolidated by LINK at FIDBA, one of the most important documentary gatherings in Latin America. Its objective is to strengthen documentary production through various opportunities for support, training, connection, and project development.
Its activities include:
Work in Progress – Presentation of advanced-stage projects.
One-to-One Meetings – Individual meetings between filmmakers and decision-makers.
DocLab – Laboratory for projects in development.
OFFICIAL PRIZES
FID:RIO awards official statuettes and diplomas to the top prizes in each competition:
- International Documentary Feature Competition
- International Documentary Short Competition
- National Documentary Short Competition (Brazil)
- Latin American Documentary Feature Competition
- International New Filmmakers Competition (First Feature Film)
- International New Narratives Competition (Experimental Cinema)
- International Reality Fiction Competition (Fiction based on real events)
- International Queer Doc Competition (LGBTQI+ Documentaries)
- International Human Rights Competition
- International Competition on Childhood and Adolescence
