Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho has criticised TV Globo's new telenovela Lá Na Minha Terra following widespread complaints over its portrayal of northeastern Brazil.
The early-evening drama premiered on Brazil's largest television network on Monday, November 9, 2026, and immediately drew backlash on social media. Viewers accused the production of relying on an outdated and stereotyped image of the country's Northeast region, known in Portuguese as the Nordeste.
Reporting by CNN Brasil noted that the opening episode sparked a heated online debate over how the series depicts local infrastructure and the everyday habits of residents in the region.
Kleber Mendonça Filho's social media posts
Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday, November 10, Mendonça Filho mocked the controversy surrounding the new serial. The director wrote that the telenovela might simply be an expensive and useless project of rage bait, using the English internet term for content created to provoke outrage and drive online engagement.
In a separate post on the platform, the director of O Agente Secreto (2025) and Bacurau (2019) said that he had not yet watched the broadcast himself, but had been following the public response. Referring to the story's fictional setting, Mendonça Filho stated that he had not seen the Lavra Seca telenovela, while describing the reactions across social media as sensational.
Mendonça Filho also turned to Instagram to poke fun at the programme. Sharing a photograph of a ceramic handicraft showing two neighbours leaning over a wall to talk, the filmmaker wrote that the 1980s ornament sits on his shelf, reminds him of a TV Globo telenovela, and captures a scene of major gossip.
Viewer debate over the portrayal of the Northeast
Across social media platforms, the premiere divided audiences. Critics of the programme argued that its setting reinforces an old-fashioned view of the Brazilian Northeast, particularly in how it presents rural living conditions and modern services.
One social media user wrote that they had tried to give Lá Na Minha Terra the benefit of the doubt, but said it was very hard to accept a telenovela set in 2026 that relies on such old portrayals. The viewer faulted the show for depicting a Northeast where residents have neither internet access nor television sets and bathe outside their homes.
Another commenter pointed to their own family's experience in the countryside, stating that their grandfather lives in a rural area where residents have internet access, electricity, filtered and piped running water, cars, and motorbikes. The viewer added that everyone there owns a mobile phone and that nobody wears traditional leather clothing anymore.
Other viewers defended the production and argued that its imagery remains close to reality in certain localities. One spectator who lives in the interior of the Northeast stated that they loved the episode and could say with confidence that the portrayal is faithful.
Kleber Mendonça Filho and regional representation in Brazil
Born in Recife, the capital of the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Mendonça Filho is one of Brazil's most prominent contemporary filmmakers and a former film critic whose work frequently examines social life in the Northeast. His 2019 thriller Bacurau, set in the interior of Pernambuco, won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and his 2025 feature O Agente Secreto further cemented his international reputation.
TV Globo, headquartered in Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil, reaches tens of millions of viewers each day through its evening telenovelas. How those national broadcasts depict the nine states of the Brazilian Northeast has long been a sensitive cultural question for artists and audiences from the region.
Lá Na Minha Terra airs on TV Globo starting at 6:25 p.m. Brasilia time.
