Rodrigo Teixeira, producer of 2025 Oscar winner “I’m Not There” and James Gray’s 2026 Cannes contender “Paper Tiger,” are in growth on their fourth movie collectively, to be made in 2027.
“It talks about the U.S. now, not the best moment they have, with probably the worst President in the world,” Teixeira superior at a masterclass delivered Wednesday at Madrid’s ECAM Discussion board worldwide co-production market.
“It’s a really troublesome time for the U.S. But additionally, I believe it’s a terrific alternative as a result of horrible occasions are a superb time to do artwork.
It’s troublesome to do this in america, as a result of individuals who finance [films] are aligned not directly with this authorities cash. Administrators might want to do movies outdoors the U.S,” Teixeira added. “American administrators will likely be coming to Brazil to make movies in Brazil, The identical manner they assist us, we have to assist them. No impartial cinema is self-sufficient in any nation on the planet, not within the U.S. nor any nation.
That in reality is already occurring. A particular visitor of Madrid’s ECAM Discussion board, Teixeira has simply wrapped Michael Almereyda’s Don DeLillo adaptation, “Zero K.” It activates a tech billionaire (Peter Sarsgaard) making ready his younger however dying spouse (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) for cryonic preservation in a cutting-edge medical facility. Caleb Landry Jones performs the billionaire’s son, battling to construct a relationship along with his companion (Britt Decrease, “Severance”) and her son.
“Zero K’s” key forged is predominately American and worldwide. Wrapping June 6, “Zero K” was shot fully, nonetheless, in São Paulo, Teixeira’s house metropolis and base of his manufacturing label, RT Features.
“Shooting an American or a French or a Belgian or a Spanish film in Brazil, I can provide great production value for less money, because we have terrific technicians. Brazilian films are at their peak. We are making great cinema. Brazil’s technicians are film buffs: They are great artists,” Teixeira advised Selection.
Teixeira’s ECAM Discussion board discuss comes at a particular time for himself and his firm. RT Options, which is popping 20. Teixeira will likely be 50 this December. So he used the discuss to replicate on his previous, the world’s current and the place the worldwide movie business goes.
“Grounded science-fiction,” mentioned Teixeira, and in addition written by Almereyda, an Alfred P. Sloan Function Movie Sundance winner for “Marjorie Prime” (2017) and “Tesla” (2020), “Zero K.” is produced by RT Options, Maintain Your Head, and Oak Avenue Photos.
It additionally kinds a part of a much bigger business image. “Peter Sarsgaard and Caleb Landry Jones are American, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas Norwegian, Selton Mello Brazilian and Géza Röhrig Hungarian, the director and DP American, the production and costume designer Brazilian,” Teixeira mentioned. “The film underscores a brand new mix with Brazil and you have this new blend in any country and that’s a beautiful blend,” he added.
“We are much more globalized now. What’s happening with the world is a movement, a geopolitical movement. The landscape of cinema is much more international than Hollywood right now. Hollywood now is much more streaming and blockbusters and independent cinema is international,” Teixeira advised Selection. “So independent film production will feature either collaborations between the U.S. and countries, or countries alone by themselves,” he advised Selection. “Original projects, even American ones, are all together in this worldwide place. The first time you see this is at festivals, and after that, you go to crazy award seasons where you need to travel like a rock band, going to all places, trying to convince people to stay in your side in the end of the day.”
Teixeira ought to know. Launching RT Options in 2006, few producers wherever outdoors the U.S. have lifted off by persistently backing icons of U.S. impartial cinema.
The breakthrough, he mentioned in Madrid, got here with Noah Baumbach’s “Francis Ha.”
Teixeira, a rarity in Latin American cinema, funds his personal movies. He was supplied the possibility to place up $500,000 to make “Francis Ha.” Teixeira beloved Baumbach’s movies, however hadn’t heard of his companion, then an unknown Greta Gerwig, nor one other key forged member known as Adam Driver, an ex marine who was going to make a U.S. TV film. Additionally the movie can be made in black and white.
But Teixeira was already into low-budget filmmaking, after his second characteristic in Brazil, Hector Dhalia’s “Drained,” an edgy obsession dramedy headed by a younger Selton Mello, already a telenovela megastar in Brazil. It made again 10 occasions Teixeira funding.
“I thought, O.K., I have something here. I know how to do this. This is easy for me. And I was learning, and Noah Baumbach was for me, a major director at that time,” he recalled. Baumbach confirmed him a reduce on June 12, 2012 – Teixeira remembers the date. “I saw the film on the screen and I thought, I know I have a success, the same feeling when I first saw ‘Drained.’”
World premiered on a giant display screen at a basketball stadium on the Telluride Competition, the viewers response to “Frances Ha” was “unbelievable,” Teixeira mentioned. And Teixeira, who had spent his early profession as a movie developer, was all of a sudden acknowledged within the U.S. as a movie producer.
Teixeira went on finance and produce Kelly Reichardt (“Night Moves,” 2013), Ira Sachs (“Love Is Strange,” 2015; “Little Men,” 2016), Robert Eggars (“The Witch, 2015; “The Lighthouse,” 2019) and Baumbach once more (“Mistress America,” 2016) whereas in 2014 launching with Martin Scorsese Sikelia, a movie fund for brand spanking new administrators.
But from Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name,” nominated for Finest Image and winner of Finest Tailored Screenplay on the 2018 ninetieth Academy Awards, Teixeira has broadened out, making three movies with James Grey – “Ad Astra” (2019), “Armageddon Time” (2022) and “Paper Tiger” but additionally producing Olivier Assayas’ “Wasp Network” (2019) Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island,” 2021).
Most notably, together with VideoFilmes and MACT, he produced Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here,” the primary Brazilian Portuguese-language movie by a Brazilian director to be nominated for Finest Image and to win an Academy Award within the Worldwide Function Movie class.
RT Options’ upcoming slate takes in not solely “Zero K,” but additionally “Glaxo,” directed by Argentina’s Benjamin Naishtat and starring Lali Espósito, Esteban Lamothe, Esteban Bigliardi, and Marcelo Subiotto in addition to Guatemalan Jayro Bustamante‘s upcoming dramatic thriller “República Luminosa.” Teixeira announced Wednesday with Variety just before his masterclass “Bodies of Summer,” a new film directed by Argentina’s Iván Fund. RT Options can be in post-production on “Wolves,” directed by Rami Kodeih and impressed by the real-life collapse of Lebanon’s banking system in 2019.
In 2025, Teixeira shot eight movies, two in Brazil and Romania, and one within the U.S., Chile, Argentina, and Lebanon. In 2026, “I’m doing a film for the first time in Asia in Cambodia and a film from a director from Singapore who is based in New York which we might bring as an American film to shoot in Brazil.” That matches in with one in every of Teixeira’s missions going ahead.
“I am trying to internationalize Brazilian technicians. As a producer, that’s part of my job, to introduce these technicians to the world. At 50, I’m much more able to do that and much more mature to present these people to other audiences. I love to do that. That’s my new moment. I’d love to be able to do that for a while. If I’m able, I will do that.”
Teixeira’s surge into worldwide displays a sea-change on impartial cinema finance and his personal private passions, Teixeira confessed at ECAM Discussion board. Teixeira likes to journey, actually and metaphorically. He’ll shoot Bustamante’s “República Luminosa” as a result of that gels with the problems within the movie.
Additionally, “Why not? I have never been to Guatemala,” he mentioned at ECAM Discussion board the place he talked about how he chooses his tasks – I’m going with my intuition” – and his duty as a producer – “to take bullets for directors.”
“In the 80s, I was crazy about National Geographic magazines because I could travel reading them,” Teixeira mentioned in Madrid. “Now I travel making films. I’m going to go to Guatemala to make a film. With James Gray I’ve traveled to the moon, Mars, Neptune, Saturn and Uranus. With a film you can go back to the 18th century. That’s what films give to me: I travel in time, space and countries. That’s the best for me. I’m not going to have a better life.”
