Brazil might be mired in financial, political and health crises ahead of the Olympics but one of its filmmakers has surprisingly won a different kind of gold medal – top prize in the Sydney Film Festival's competition.

Kleber Mendonca Filho's Aquarius, a drama about a retired music critic battling to save her apartment from a development company, claimed the $63,000 Sydney Film Prize for "courageous, audacious and cutting-edge" cinema.

Veteran actress Sonia Braga, best known for Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Sex and the City, stars in a film that focuses on the indignities of aging but still manages to include a graphic sex scene in flashback, an explicit orgy and a lusty encounter with a young gigolo.