Imagine waiting ten years for a business license to sell a hot dog. In Brazil, that actually happened.
This short trailer introduces the entrepreneurs, reformers, and policymakers who helped bring work out of the shadow economy, and into the open.
For decades, Brazil’s entrepreneurs have faced a maze of government licenses, approvals, and arbitrary bureaucracy. Nearly 40% of the population worked in the informal economy, not by choice, but because legal business licensing and registration could take years.
Businesses operated without protection. Officials could demand bribes. Honest work was pushed into uncertainty.
An award-winning Brazilian cheese was celebrated in France, but could not be sold legally at home. A retired scientist lost sleep and health navigating bureaucracy before she could bring her research to market.
These stories were not exceptions. They were symptoms of a destructive system.
Across Brazil, a new approach is taking hold: Freedom to Work.
Marcelo Faria and his team at Instituto Liberal de São Paulo (ILISP) began working city by city, state by state, to encourage local adoption of Brazil’s Economic Freedom Law to remove unnecessary licensing requirements and limit the discretionary power that kept entrepreneurs waiting for years.
Entrepreneurs who once waited years could begin operating in minutes.
This documentary captures how that shift happened, and the coalition of nonprofit leaders, policymakers, and citizens who made it possible.
Atlas Network exists to strengthen locally led efforts that expand opportunity and limit government overreach.
Freedom to Work documents how our partners helped advance reforms that brought millions of Brazilians into the formal economy, unlocking dignity, security, and growth.
This film offers a rare look at reform in action, when ideas move from paper to policy, and policy changes real lives.