Five Years, Four Months (Cinco años, cuatro meses), Esteban Hoyos García and Juan Miguel Gelacio’s drama about a mother looking for a son who disappeared in Colombia’s armed conflict, won the jury prize for best fiction at the 50th São Paulo International Film Festival (Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo) on Thursday 29 October, the festival said. Mexican director Fernanda Tovar was named best director for Sad Girlz (Chicas Tristes), which also took the critics’ award for best international film.
Key facts
- Best fiction (jury): Five Years, Four Months, by Esteban Hoyos García and Juan Miguel Gelacio (Colombia, US)
- Best documentary (jury) and audience award for international documentary: The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs, by Matteo Norzi and Èlia Gasull Balada (Peru, US, Qatar)
- Best direction (jury) and critics’ best international film: Fernanda Tovar, Sad Girlz (Mexico, Spain, France)
- The 50th Mostra ran from 15 to 29 October and screened 394 titles from more than 90 countries at 57 venues across the city, the festival says
The awards were handed out at the closing ceremony at the Teatro Cultura Artística. The jury, made up of filmmakers Ali Asgari, Boots Riley, César Augusto Acevedo and Laís Bodanzky, did not pick from the whole programme. As the festival explains, it chose from the New Directors Competition titles that audiences rated highest during the first week, so every jury winner had already passed a public vote. Jury winners receive the Bandeira Paulista trophy designed by the artist Tomie Ohtake, according to TMC.
The jury winners
Five Years, Four Months runs 84 minutes. Its central character, Martha, is 45 and has lost track of her son. When the latest exhumation she attends turns up no remains that match him, the official routes are exhausted. Through a group of women she meets Sandra, who has heard that in a village far out on the plains you can ask a favour of the dead, and the two set off. The film is produced by Selva Producciones and Redline Enterprises, with Andante Producciones and Chicamocha Films as co-producers; the Mostra lists Patra Spanou for world sales. In its citation, as published by TMC, the jury praised the film’s treatment of grief and memory and of a mother’s search for the truth.
Sad Girlz follows two 16-year-old friends, the strongest swimmers on their team, as they train for the Junior Pan American Championships, and what happens to their friendship after a party. According to the festival’s film page, it arrived in São Paulo with the Crystal Bear for best film in the Berlinale’s Generation 14plus section. Colectivo Colmena produced it with partners in Spain and France, and Alpha Violet handles world sales.
The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs, shown in São Paulo as O Beija-Flor Pinta Canções Perfumadas, is a portrait of Sara Flores, a 75-year-old Indigenous artist from the Peruvian Amazon who has broken into the international art world and uses her work to defend her Shipibo people. It won both the jury’s documentary prize and the audience award for international documentary. FiGa Films represents it. The jury’s special prize went to Maiken Baird’s US documentary Edward Said: Between Worlds, sold by Dogwoof.
Audience, critics and partner prizes
None of the four jury prizes went to a Brazilian film. Brazilian titles won elsewhere. The audience award for Brazilian fiction was shared by Allan Deberton’s Gugu’s World (Feito Pipa), which won the Crystal Bear and the international jury’s Grand Prix in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus section, and Carlos Saldanha’s 100 Days (100 Dias), about rower Amyr Klink’s solo crossing of the South Atlantic. Pedro Waddington’s Fernanda took the audience prize for Brazilian documentary, and the critics chose Daniel Nolasco’s Little Tragedies (Pequenas Tragédias) as best Brazilian film.
Audiences also voted Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden (Soudain), shown in São Paulo as O Sentido da Vida, best international fiction. Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shared the best actress award for it at Cannes in May. The Netflix prize went to Thais Fujinaga’s Talismã (“Talisman”) and the Projeto Paradiso prize to Ricardo Alves Jr.’s The French Teacher (A Professora de Francês). Honorary Leon Cakoff awards went to James Gray, the producer Paulo Branco and S.S. Rajamouli, and the Humanity award to Marco Bechis.
The Mostra did not publish cash values for any prize. The Netflix prize carries distribution: Talismã will be released by Netflix in the 190 territories where the service operates, TMC reported.
Where it fits
São Paulo closes a month in which Latin American festivals have handed out their main awards, after Morelia, where Six Months in a Pink and Blue Building won best Mexican feature. In Brazil’s own cinemas, chains have announced a week of R$12 ($2.40) tickets for local films, and the weekend Clayface topped was the weakest of 2026 so far. The next stop for many of these titles is Ventana Sur, the Latin American market, which runs in Montevideo from 30 November to 4 December.
Our reading
The Mostra’s jury winners come pre-tested: the jury can only choose from titles audiences already liked, so a prize here signals both critical approval and crowd response. That is a signal programmers and buyers can use, and it showed in this year’s results, where the documentary prize and the international documentary audience award went to the same film.
The other pattern is in the paperwork. Three of the four jury winners are cross-border co-productions, and all four have an international sales company attached. Sad Girlz has now added a director prize and a critics’ award to its Berlin win, which strengthens its case with Spanish-language distributors. The next evidence will be territory sales: whether Five Years, Four Months and Sad Girlz turn São Paulo prizes into Latin American and European release dates, with Ventana Sur the first place to look.
Sources
- Mostra Internacional de Cinema em São Paulo, list of 50th Mostra winners, 29 October 2026
- Mostra film page, Cinco Años, Cuatro Meses (synopsis, credits, world sales)
- Mostra film page, Chicas Tristes
- Mostra film page, The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs
- Mostra film page, Soudain
- Mostra film page, Feito Pipa
- Folha de S.Paulo, 29 October 2026
- TMC, 29 October 2026 (jury citations, Bandeira Paulista trophy)
- Ventana Sur, about the market
- Mostra film page, Edward Said: Entre Mundos (world sales)
- Mostra film page, 100 Dias
- Patra Spanou Film, Five Years, Four Months (international title)
- Berlinale, Chicas Tristes | Sad Girlz
- Berlinale, Feito Pipa | Gugu’s World
- Festival de Cannes, 79th winners’ list