Empress of Carnival is a feature documentary about the preparation of a major samba-school for the carnival parade of the year 2000 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  Offering an entertaining presentation of the intricate, nine-month preparation work, the documentary also features never-before-seen parade images and surround-sound recordings of the samba-school’s percussion ensemble.

The journalist Sérgio Cabral, Brazil’s leading authority on the history of the samba-schools, has hailed Empress of Carnival  “the best, the deepest, and the most complete audio-visual x-ray ever taken of a samba-school.”