São Paulo's carnival competition

Available for over a year

Every year during Brazil’s carnival celebrations, samba schools are tasked with creating elaborate parades based around a unique theme, from which they build huge floats, compose a song, and choreograph an entire visual spectacle. Tom Raine follows one of São Paulo’s oldest samba schools, Águia de Ouro, in the final stages of creating their carnival parade for their most important event of the year - parading in São Paulo’s iconic Sambadrome in the attendance of thousands of people, and millions more watching on TV across Brazil. This year they have chosen a theme titled Amsterdam: City of Liberty, celebrating the cities’ values of freedom, tolerance and modernity. It is not just a celebration but a fierce competition, with rigorous judging and a football-style league system of promotion and relegation. This episode of The Documentary, comes to you from In the Studio, exploring the processes of the world’s most creative people.