Brazil’s ‘Netflix of the Right’ Lands in Miami

Bolsonaro is out, Trump is in, and Brasil Paralelo, a production company, is moving into the United States as Big Picture Originals.

In a recent evening, Mike Benz, who was a State Department official during the first Trump administration, gathered with Catalina Stubbe, a former Miss World Colombia who is now the director of Hispanic outreach for Moms for Liberty; representatives from Turning Point USA; and other right-wing influencers in Miami for the screening of a documentary, God Complex: The Rise of America’s Censorship Machine. The film—which features talking heads including Benz; Jan Jekielek, a senior editor for the Epoch Times; and Chanel Rion, a host on One America News Network, the right-wing channel—revolves around a premise that “vast networks built over decades” are silencing dissent in the American political system. Though it is a movie about the United States, made largely for an American audience (promotional images depict the Statue of Liberty with a piece of red cloth tied around her mouth), the film can be traced thousands of miles away, to Brazil.

God Complex is the brainchild of Brasil Paralelo, Portuguese for “Parallel Brazil,” a production company and streaming service that Folha de S.Paulo, the Brazilian newspaper, once described as aiming to be the “Netflix of the right.” The premiere and a subsequent event in Washington, DC, marked the beginning of the firm’s expansion into the US market, where it has rebranded as Big Picture Originals. “We use the force of cinema to give life to the ideas that matter,” Lucas Ferrugem, one of Big Picture Originals’ cofounders, said in a speech at the beginning of the big night in Miami. “We produce with the techniques of cinema, but the soul of education.”