Brazilian-Lebanese Film, “The Last Stop,” Premieres in Brasília

This year’s Festival of Brazilian Cinema in Brasília will open on September 17 with Márcio Curi’s “The Last Stop,” a film that represents a deepening creative and commercial partnership between Brazil and Lebanon after decades of Lebanese immigration to Brazil.

A collaboration between Brazilian production companies Asacine and Cinevideo with Lebanon’s Day Two Pictures, “The Last Stop” (“A Última Estação”) will premiere on September 17 at the Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro in Brasília and tells the story of Tarik (Mounir Maasri) a Lebanese immigrant who arrives in Brazil in the 1950s and sets out across the country with his daughter over 50 years later to locate fellow immigrants who made the journey with him.

There are over 7 million Lebanese migrants and their descendants living in Brazil, a large percentage of a Lebanese diaspora estimated to range from 12 to 15 million people. “The Last Stop” represents the first feature-length co-production between Brazil and Lebanon for Cinevideo and Asacine.

Since 2008, Cinevideo has maintained a branch in Maputo, Mozambique, where it produced the Mozambican miniseries “N’Txuva” (“Lives at Stake”). Recently, the company has partnered with the Al Jazeera network to invest in the Arab market and co-produce documentaries in the Middle East.

“Our expertise was always documentaries, which we’ve done for the last 17 years,” said Maria Tchilian, a spokesperson for Cinevideo. “We are involved in this project because we believe that the Lebanese influence in Brazil is very large and also because we want to invest more in feature-length films.”

The Festival of Brazilian Cinema in Brasília, which celebrates its 45th anniversary in the Brazilian capital from September 17 to 24, provides a space for aspiring Brazilian filmmakers to compete for prizes, participate in workshops and debates, attend lectures, and take in some of the year’s most promising new films in a variety of categories.

Watch a trailer for “The Last Stop:”