São Paulo's carnival competition

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.

For 3 weeks, Tom Raine followed one of São Paulo’s oldest samba schools, Águia de Ouro, in the final stages of creating their carnival parade ahead of 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’ve chosen a theme titled “Amsterdam: City of Liberty”, celebrating the cities’ values of freedom, tolerance and modernity. It’s not just a celebration but a fierce competition, with rigorous judging and a football-style league system of promotion and relegation.

In The Studio goes behind the scenes to São Paulo’s “carnival factory” to find out what it takes to put on a parade, from one whole year of work to just one hour on the tarmac.

Presenter / producer: Tom Raine