Prime Video and the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP have acquired the Portuguese rights to Gisberta – Vida e Morte de uma Mulher Trans (“Gisberta: Life and Death of a Trans Woman”), a four-part true-crime docuseries from Lisbon’s Volf Entertainment, Variety reported on 12 November. Prime Video takes the subscription streaming rights and RTP the free-to-air and ad-supported streaming rights. Fees were not disclosed.
Leonel Vieira, Volf’s founder and the series’ showrunner, told Variety that most of the financing was secured between Amazon and Portugal’s cash rebate before RTP came on board. The state’s share turns out to be modest. Portugal Film Commission records show the series was the last project admitted in its funding round and received €90,761 ($102,000), about a third of the €270,000 ($305,000) calculated for it, because the round’s budget had run out.
Key facts
- Buyers: Prime Video (subscription streaming) and RTP (free-to-air and ad-supported streaming), Portugal only; fees not disclosed
- Series: four 45-minute episodes, in post-production; co-directed by Leonel Vieira and Rodrigo Rebouças, who created it
- Producers: Volf Entertainment (Portugal) with Ultravioleta (Brazil); About Premium Content (France) expected to handle international sales
- Public money: €90,761 ($102,000) from Portugal’s cash rebate, against €270,000 ($305,000) calculated, after the 2024 second-phase round reached its €6.775m ($7.6m) cap (FilmBunch, from Portugal Film Commission lists; dollars at the ECB rate of 29 May 2025)
The series
The series revisits the killing of Gisberta Salce Júnior, a Brazilian transgender woman who died in Porto in 2006 after being tortured by 14 minors living at the Oficina de São José, a Catholic-run children’s home. The teenagers were acquitted of homicide, although some received lesser penalties or educational measures, Variety notes. The case caused outrage in Portugal and Brazil, and the home closed in 2010. Built from archive footage, court records, her letters, interviews and dramatised reconstructions, the series follows her life from Brazil to Europe, her killing and the court case that followed.
Rebouças created the project with Alice Marcondes, according to Revista de Cinema, which reported in 2024 that the producers were aiming for a release around EuroPride 2025 in Lisbon. That date passed without a release, and no premiere date has been announced.
The project was pitched at Conecta Fiction & Entertainment in Toledo in June 2024, where it won music-licensing support from Acorde and an invitation to the series lab at Chile’s Sanfic Industria, whose 2026 edition FilmBunch covered this month. Vieira told Variety those awards were the springboard for the pitch to Amazon.
What the public records show
Portugal’s cash rebate for film and television is paid from the Tourism and Cinema Support Fund. The Portugal Film Commission scores and ranks applications in rounds, each with a fixed budget. Its published lists show Volf applying for Gisberta at least three times.
In the first 2024 round, the series scored 46 points and was not admitted. In the second it scored 56 and ranked 25th. The final list of 14 April 2025 marked it eligible but not admitted, because the round’s €6.775m ($7.6m) budget ran out before reaching it. An updated list dated 29 May 2025 admitted it as “partially supported” with €90,761.45, the exact sum left under the cap. A further application in the first round of 2025 was ruled ineligible under article 14 of the incentive regulation and was not scored.
The same update moved Honeyjoon, the Azores-set feature whose Portuguese applicant was Wonder M. Filmes, from a partial award of €9,588 in April to its full €213,051 ($240,000). Honeyjoon is one of four films on the launch slate of Attend, the US cinema-booking marketplace that opened at the American Film Market this week.
Who is behind it
Volf Entertainment was founded in 2022 and is backed by an investment fund managed by Quadrantis Capital, according to Variety. Vieira is best known for the Portuguese box-office hit O Pátio das Cantigas and the HBO Max thriller O Grito. Volf’s previous series, the Spain–Portugal thriller Favàritx, was also split between a streamer and RTP, in that case Max. Vieira is in post-production on A Noite, a José Saramago adaptation co-produced with Spain’s Spal Films. He said he believes Gisberta is the first true-crime series made for a streaming platform in Portugal; FilmBunch has not been able to verify that. For international sales he is looking to the French distributor About Premium Content, which helped finance the series in development.
Prime Video has been adding local and partner content across Europe, including BBC Player as a channel in Spain and Poland. Next door, Spain has just set the counting rules for streamers’ European-works quotas.
Our reading
For a small Portuguese producer, the financing is the story. Gisberta got into the cash rebate only through the sum left at the bottom of a capped round, a third of its calculated award, and a later application in 2025 was ruled ineligible. With a streamer and the public broadcaster now sharing the domestic rights, the series appears to have closed its plan regardless. The lesson for other producers is that a rebate paid in capped rounds rewards a strong score and early timing as much as eligibility.
The next test is international. About Premium Content has not yet announced any sales, and Brazil, where Gisberta was born and the case is well known, is the obvious first market.
Sources
- Variety, Prime Video and RTP take Portuguese rights to Gisberta (12 November 2026)
- Portugal Film Commission, cash rebate 2024 second phase, updated final ranking list (29 May 2025)
- Portugal Film Commission, cash rebate 2024 second phase, final ranking list (April 2025)
- Portugal Film Commission, cash rebate 2024 first phase, final ranking list (14 August 2024)
- Portugal Film Commission, incentive 2025 first phase, final ranking list (3 September 2025)
- Volf Entertainment, About
- Revista de Cinema, Portugal–Brazil true-crime series on Gisberta (16 August 2024)
- European Central Bank, euro reference rate for the US dollar, 29 May 2025 (1.1281)