The moment

Brazil went into its October 2026 runoff with Lula trailing. He finished the first round on October 4 almost two points behind, and polls in the final days showed the race tied. In Brazil there is a word for a game won from behind: virada. We set out to make that feeling impossible to scroll past in the last 72 hours before the vote.

The idea

#Virada13 is a two-minute film built on the great comebacks of Brazilian sport and set to the promise of “Heroes”: Neste domingo, podemos ser heróis... pela floresta, pelo Brasil e pelo mundo. This Sunday, we can be heroes, for the forest, for Brazil and for the world. It was an independent film made with love, never an official campaign piece, and designed from the start to be shared by people, not placed by media buys.

The push

The film premiered on Friday, October 23, through Mark Ruffalo and Jason Momoa, who posted it to their own Instagram accounts. Alongside it we launched virada.vote, a bilingual site built for one job: to turn viewers into distributors. Anyone could watch, download the film in full quality with a ready-to-paste caption, post it to their own channels, and send it on WhatsApp to five people they love. On phones, the film saved straight to the camera roll so it could go wherever people already were.

The response

• 20 million views across all platforms in the final days of the campaign.
• On Mark Ruffalo’s Instagram, 9 million views in its first 24 hours. That put it in the top 5% of his most recent 300 reels and well ahead of the pace of his recent film trailers. It drew more than 100,000 comments, more than any of his top reels we checked.
• Thousands of downloads and reposts by ordinary people across Brazil and around the world, carrying the film on their own feeds, stories and family group chats.
• A thank-you from @lulaoficial himself: “Obrigado pelo carinho e por esse vídeo tão emocionante, companheiro!”
• The language travelled. In the comments, people took up the film’s words as their own: “Essa virada é nossa! Pela floresta, pelo Brasil e pelo mundo!” (“This comeback is ours! For the forest, for Brazil and for the world!”) and “Os heróis não fogem à luta” (“Heroes don’t run from a fight”).

On Sunday, October 25, Lula won with about 51.8% of the vote, coming from behind to win a fourth term. Many people and many efforts made that happen. #Virada13 was one voice in a closing push that asked people not just to watch, but to act and to share.

What’s next: a comeback for the forest

The election was one comeback. The forest is the next. Brazil’s government reported this month that Amazon deforestation fell to its lowest annual level since records began in 1988, down more than 70% since 2023. #Virada13 is now turning its audience and its tools toward building on that progress, to bring deforestation down further still and give the forest its own virada.