China knew Brazil through City of God. Now it wants to co-produce

At the business end of São Paulo's biggest film festival, the conversation was about rules. On a panel about Brazil and China at the Mercado de Ideias Audiovisuais, the deal-making market attached to the 50th Mostra de São Paulo, Chinese producer Shen Kemin walked the room through the investment rules for making films across the two countries. According to the trade magazine Screen Daily, her case was clear: the time for Brazil-China co-production has arrived.

The timing has a reason. Brazil's Senate has approved a bilateral agreement under which a co-produced film counts as a national work in both countries. That status opens each market to a project as if it were homegrown. Shen Kemin made her pitch with the deal freshly signed, and the first projects are already moving.

Trade in films between the two countries already exists. Sato Company distributes Chinese films in Brazil, and Brazilian titles such as Ainda Estou Aqui (I'm Still Here) have screened in China. But distribution means putting someone else's finished film in front of an audience. Co-producing means writing it together from the start, and Brazil has made very few co-productions with China so far.

Then there is the question of image. For years, Chinese audiences knew Brazilian cinema almost entirely through Central do Brasil (Central Station) and Cidade de Deus (City of God), two films that fixed one version of the country on screen. New stories have to reach that audience without losing what makes them Brazilian.

China is shifting from trading with Brazil to making culture alongside it, and the first sign of that shift is a panda listening for Brazilian sound.