General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Nada a Perder

Nada a Perder (full release title Nada a Perder – Contra Tudo. Por Todos, English title Nothing to Lose) is a 2018 Brazilian biographical drama directed by Alexandre Avancini about Edir Macedo, founder of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (IURD) and owner of the Record TV network.¹^•² It is an authorized biopic based on the three-volume book series Nada a Perder, written from Macedo's own account, which had sold more than 7 million copies and been translated into five languages.³^•⁴ The film's ticket sales were described by universal.org as the largest box office in the history of Brazilian cinema, and the film was one of the most debated, with critics describing it as a hagiography (uncritical biography glorifying its subject) of its subject.⁵^•⁶

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Alexandre Avancini; screenplay credited to Emílio Boechat and Stephen P. Lindsey, with Macedo as story creator⁷
Subject	Edir Macedo, co-founder in 1977 of the IURD and owner of Rede Record⁶
Lead cast	Petrônio Gontijo as Edir Macedo; Day Mesquita as Ester Bezerra Macedo¹
Brazil release	March 29, 2018, on about 1,161 screens²
Admissions	11,418,455 tickets in Brazil per ANCINE data; other counts give over 12 million²^•⁸
Box office	Brazil $32,995,668; worldwide $38,399,842 (The Numbers)⁷
Running time / rating	130 minutes; rated 12 in Brazil and PG in the United States¹^•⁷
Sequel	Nada a Perder 2: Não Se Pode Esconder a Verdade (2019), also directed by Avancini⁹

Spoilers

Subject and source material

The film dramatizes the life of Edir Macedo from childhood through the founding of the IURD, a Pentecostal denomination that the Spanish media analysis group MRC describes as Brazil's largest evangelical institution, with more than 7,000 temples and 8 million members.⁶ The source is the autobiographical trilogy Nada a Perder, whose volumes carry the subtitles Contra Tudo. Por Todos, Mis desafíos ante lo imposible (volume 2) and Del quiosco al templo de Salomón (volume 3).³^•⁶ The film's narrative follows the books' order: it opens with Macedo reflecting in prison, moves through his childhood, youth and early preaching, his disagreements with the missionary R. R. Soares, and ends with Macedo in New York receiving a call about a crisis in Brazil, the episode in which Bishop Sérgio von Helder kicked an image of Our Lady of Aparecida on a Record television program.¹⁰

A central episode is Macedo's arrest in May 1992 in São Paulo, when his car was surrounded by police vehicles and he was detained on accusations of charlatanism, folk healing (curandeirismo) and fraud (estelionato); the film depicts the 11 days he spent imprisoned and the gathering of church members outside the jail.¹¹^•⁶

Streaming and sequel

The film was placed on Netflix in Brazil on June 29, 2018 and reached the platform's other markets on July 18; universal.org described the deal as the largest acquisition Netflix had made for an international production and said it would reach 83 million users.²⁰ The film remains available on Netflix, and in February 2025 the church's own Univer Vídeo platform added both films of the series in four languages.⁴^•⁸

A sequel, Nada a Perder 2: Não Se Pode Esconder a Verdade, directed again by Avancini, was released in 2019. It covers the later controversies of Macedo's career, including the Aparecida image episode and the 1998 Osasco temple roof collapse, alongside the acquittals, the church's international growth, and the 2014 inauguration of the Temple of Solomon in São Paulo.⁹

Production

Scale. The production was a partnership between Paris Entretenimento (or Paris Filmes) and RecordTV, distributed by Paris Filmes and Downtown Filmes.¹^•¹¹ Universal.org, the IURD's own portal, reported a budget of R$ 40 million, a figure it said included the cost of the planned sequel; a later Brazilian film review put the film's cost at under R$ 20 million and noted that ticket sales returned about six times that amount.¹¹^•¹²

Shooting. Filming began in São Paulo on May 15, 2017, with sixteen weeks of work planned in the capital, followed by location work in Jerusalem and Johannesburg.¹³ The production used more than 6,000 extras and 100 locations in the interior of São Paulo state, the city of São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, with sets recreating Brazil of the 1960s through the 1990s, plus shooting in Israel, the United States, and South Africa.¹¹ Pedro Cardillo was the director of photography and Frederico Pinto the production designer.¹

Box office

The film opened in Brazil on March 29, 2018 on 1,161 screens, about one third of the country's screens, and its opening weekend grossed nearly R$ 26 million.²^•¹⁴ It ran for 19 weeks, peaking in its fourth week with 3.3 million admissions.²

Admissions figures differ by source and counting method. ANCINE's ticket-control data, as compiled by Wikinerd, record 11,418,455 admissions and R$ 116.4 million in box office revenue; universal.org cites ANCINE for a figure above 12.1 million and calls it the largest box office in the history of Brazilian cinema; Unifrance's 2018 world report counts 12 million entries and ranks it the biggest Brazilian success of 2018 and the top Brazilian film of the preceding ten years.²^•⁸^•⁵ In May 2018, before the run ended, the monitoring firm comScore counted nearly 9 million tickets, already the most for a Brazilian film since comScore began measuring in 2002.¹⁵ In dollar terms, The Numbers reports $32,995,668 from Brazil and $38,399,842 worldwide, with further releases in Argentina, Mexico, and Portugal and a limited United States release by Swen Group.⁷ Universal.org also reported that the film accounted for half of all Brazilian cinema's box office in 2018, in a year when national film admissions rose 29.9 percent over the previous year.¹⁶

Reception and controversy

Critical response. The film was reviewed harshly by mainstream critics. Unifrance's report notes it was "assassinated by the critique" even as tickets sold out in the first week.⁵ The AdoroCinema review, rated 2.0 out of 5, argued that because the biography was not only authorized but commissioned and produced by the Universal Church, the portrait lacks nuance: Macedo appears as a man without defects, while evangelical religion is presented as the only true and effective one and Catholicism and rival preachers come off badly.¹⁷ The MRC review in Spain reached a similar conclusion, calling the film less a biopic than an interested hagiography that offers no counterweight to question its subject, though it acknowledged the production's considerable resources, including aerial shots, large crowds, and elaborate period reconstruction.⁶

Ticket-sales questions. The film's attendance figures drew scrutiny. The Guardian reported in May 2018 that although the film was said to be sold out, screenings in São Paulo were half-empty, and that some moviegoers reported being given tickets by the church; critics called it a "programmed success". The film's distributors denied having inflated pre-sales.¹⁵^•¹⁸ A 2019 academic reception study of the sequel also examined media reports of a possible discrepancy between reported ticket numbers and actual audiences for both Os Dez Mandamentos – O Filme and Nada a Perder: Contra Tudo.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2015 to 2019 › Drama films 2017 and 2018

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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