Dance in Film · 2012
A Batalha do Passinho (2012)
Emílio Domingos follows Rio favela dancers from homemade internet challenges into organized battles, preserving passinho as a youth-built language of identity, mobility, and invention rather than treating it as background spectacle.
A Batalha do Passinho is a 2012 dance documentary centred on ballroom and social dance. For dancers, it's a chance to see the style performed on screen — the phrasing, partnering, and musicality that the same dances carry onto a real floor.
Jump to the 3 indexed dance sequences ↓
Where to watch: Apple TV’s Brazil catalog listed the film in the Prime Video app on 2026-08-10; access is regional and may change. Itaú Cultural’s IC Play page also remained live and described the documentary as part of its catalog, last updated 2025-05-11.
Trailer
Official trailer.
The dance sequences in A Batalha do Passinho
3 sequences — what is danced, by whom, and where to find it.
Citywide passinho battle duels
PassinhoDanced by Cebolinha; Gambá; other competitors
A sequence of live duels builds toward the citywide contest for the king of passinho title.
The one-on-one improvisations make individual authorship visible as dancers recombine funk-carioca footwork with frevo, lundu, samba, capoeira, hip-hop, and kuduro under competition pressure.
Not currently available to stream; timestamp is for reference. Canal Curta's official catalog identifies the 2012 Emílio Domingos film at 73 minutes and currently offers an availability alert/promo rather than a verified full stream. Institutional records conflict on 72/73 minutes and 2012/2013; the canonical 2012 identity is preserved. No edition-specific timestamp was inferred.
Gambá's king-of-passinho showcase
PassinhoDanced by Gambá
After choosing dance over his plastering job, Gambá describes the awards and acclaim that established him as a passinho king.
Gambá's self-authored steps turn personality, gender play, and rhythmic invention into technique, showing why the film treats passinho as a route to recognition rather than a fixed vocabulary.
Not currently available to stream; timestamp is for reference. Canal Curta's official catalog identifies the 2012 Emílio Domingos film at 73 minutes and currently offers an availability alert/promo rather than a verified full stream. Institutional records conflict on 72/73 minutes and 2012/2013; the canonical 2012 identity is preserved. No edition-specific timestamp was inferred.
Passinho Foda backyard reconstruction
PassinhoThe dancers recreate the backyard setting associated with the early Passinho Foda video that helped the style spread online.
Returning the original viral video's dancers to the same backyard links phone-camera circulation to documentary staging and makes the online origin of the movement legible within the film.
Not currently available to stream; timestamp is for reference. Canal Curta's official catalog identifies the 2012 Emílio Domingos film at 73 minutes and currently offers an availability alert/promo rather than a verified full stream. Institutional records conflict on 72/73 minutes and 2012/2013; the canonical 2012 identity is preserved. No edition-specific timestamp was inferred.
This site uses TMDB and the TMDB APIs but is not endorsed, certified, or otherwise approved by TMDB.