São Paulo, Incorporated

Writer-director Luiz Sérgio Person’s debut feature is a masterly vision of existential unrest in Saõ Paulo amid the mass industrialization of the 1960s. This bracingly modernist, puzzlelike film follows Carlos (Walmor Chagas), a middle-class auto-industry employee, as he questions his relationships with romantic partners past and present (played by Darlene Glória, Ana Esmeralda, and Eva Wilma), as well as his participation in the transforming economy. A kind of city symphony filled with striking, dynamic images of a rapidly changing urban landscape, São Paulo, Incorporated is a cry of rebellion against a suffocating push to modernize, and one of the landmark works of Brazilian cinema.

São Paulo, Incorporated was restored in 2025 by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata, Cinemateca Brasileira, and JLS Facilidades Sonoras–Estúdio JLS, in association with Cinemateca Brasileira, Lauper Films Ltda, and the family of Luiz Sérgio Person. Funding was provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Special thanks to the Italian Institute of Culture in São Paulo.