Laura Blum

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Each September, as spring rains wash over Rio de Janeiro, the town bursts abloom with the Festival do Rio and its cinematic flourishings. South America's biggest international film festival, now in its 16th year, is poised to display nearly 350 works during its 15-day run beginning September 24.

Of these, 69 works will screen in the Festival's homegrown section, Première Brasil. This centerpiece banner spans such categories as Competitive Fiction, Competitive Documentary and Hors Concours. Rounding out the section are the sidebars New Trends and Portraits.

This year Première Brasil will roll out two new awards: for best direction of a documentary and a special jury prize for New Trends. Presiding over the 2014 jury is Brazilian director and former Festival prizewinner Karim Aïnouz.

Première Brazil occupies a somewhat exalted position in the Festival do Rio firmament, both among festival-goers who weigh in on four winning selections at the ballot box and among the filmmakers who capitalize on networking opps with visiting industry players from around the globe. Emerging talents dangle their creations alongside more established names who came up with the "retomada" of the mid-'90s, when the country began reviving its cinema sector. Twinkling with world premieres, Première Brasil enjoys bragging rights as the world's foremost showcase of contemporary Brazilian films.

At the Closing Night rites of October 8, revelers will learn which entries take home Troféu Redentors (Redeemer Trophies) in the best feature film, best feature-length documentary and best short film grooves. A total of 20 full-length works and 16 shorts are vying for these Première Brazil medals inspired by Rio's most cinegenic statue, Cristo Redentor.

Among the 10 fiction features in the running is Chico Teixeira's Absence (Ausência). The erstwhile documentarian's follow-up to his fiction feature debut, Alice's House, tracks a 14-year-old boy grappling with his father's abandonment. It's one of a handful of coming-of-age dramas in this year's competition that include Fellipe Barbosa's Big House (Casa Grande) and André Ristum's The Other Side of Paradise (O Outro Lado do Paraíso). A gentle skewering of class hypocrisies and racism, Big House turns on the romantic exploits of a wealthy teen who dreams of slipping his secretly broke parents' overbearing reins. The Other Side of Paradise, a world premiere, charts a trade union member's struggles in Brasília on the eve of Brazil's 1964 military coup, as narrated by his 12-year-old son.

Brazil's dictatorship hovers over another fiction in competition, Gregorio Graziosi’s debut feature Obra. Shot in black-and-white, this moody mystery unveils a young architect’s family secrets and moral pangs as human remains are exhumed from the site of his newest project.

There's also Daniel Aragao's I Swear I'll Leave This Town (Prometo um dia deixar essa cidade). Billed as a psycho-thriller, Town takes the relationship between a politician and his former drug-addicted daughter and puts it on the couch. Aragao's previous film, the music-soaked "anti-romance" Good Luck, Sweetheart (Boa sorte, meu amor) garnered the then-first-time feature director an enthusiasic fan base.

Veteran filmmakers in the mix include Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands cinematographer Murilo Salles, whose Means To An End (O Fim e os Meios) will contend in the Fiction Competition, and Lírio Ferreira, who enters the fray with family drama Blue Blood (Sangue Azul).

In the non-fiction competition, Favela Gay comes to the Festival with notable buzz. With Carlos Dieges on his production team, Rodrigo Felha's trains his camera on 11 LGBT denizens of Rio de Janeiro’s slums as they share stories and comic relief about their experiences of homophobia.

Beyond best fiction, best doc and best short namings, Troféu Redentors will also go to the winners in such Première Brazil categories as: Best Direction of Fiction, Best Director of Documentary, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Photography, Best Feature Film Fiction Popular Vote, Best Feature Documentary Popular Vote and Best Short Film Popular Vote.

Screening out of competition Première Brasil will be Trinta, Paulo Machline's dramatization of Joãosinho Trinta's first go at designing a Samba school parade at the Rio Carnival. The biopic was developed from Synthesis of a Race (A Raça Síntese de Joãosinho Trinta), a 2009 documentary that Machline co-directed. Also playing out of competition will be Pablo Fendrik’s El Ardor (Ardor), a Western set in the Amazon staring Gael Garcia Bernal and Alice Braga.

This year's made-in-Brazil pavillion basks in the glow of recent cash infusions for the domestic film and television sector. In July, President Dilma Roussef earmarked $540 million in production, distribution, programming and (digital) exhibition incentives under the state program Brasil de Todas as Telas. But already last December, the federal agency Ancine announced nearly a third of that package, intended to give Brazil's entertainment industry an edge in the global marketplace.

Première Brazil itself has ventured out beyond Rio. The showcase has brought selected works to New York's Museum of Modern Art, D.C., Lisbon's Centro Cultural de Belém (as part of 2013's Ano do Brasil em Portugal) and Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among other venerable world venues.

But during the Festival do Rio, Première Brasil will largely unfold in Cinépolis Lagoon (Av Borges de Medeiros 1424). A coconut's throw from the shores of the Lagoa, the cinema complex will also host many of the Festival's gala screenings.

For a full roster of Première Brasil 2014 and other fest goings on, visit the Festival do Rio website http://www.festivaldorio.com.br.