[3] The festival was created in 1977 when film critic Leon Cakoff decided to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP).

These pre-festival screenings had a large audience turnout, including films that came without Portuguese subtitles and sometimes with no translation at all, proving the strength of the city's cultural demand.

Films often had to be screened to a censorship committee before being shown to the public and transportation difficulties sometimes forced the prints to arrive in Brazil inside diplomatic luggage with the aid of embassies and consulates.

After leaving the museum in 1984, the festival stood up to the censors and began a legal battle for the right to screen the films directly to the public, with no prior censorship interference.

Notable international guests since 1977 include Dennis Hopper, Pedro Almodóvar, Park Chan-wook, Miguel Gomes, Victoria Abril, Jane Birkin, Guy Maddin, Abbas Kiarostami, Claudia Cardinale, Amos Gitai, Les Blank, Quentin Tarantino, Maria de Medeiros, Wim Wenders, Alan Parker, Manoel de Oliveira, Christian Berger, Kiju Yoshida, Atom Egoyan, Danis Tanovic, Satyajit Ray, Eizo Sugawa, Theo Angelopoulos, Marisa Paredes, Rossy de Palma, Geraldine Chaplin and Jonas Mekas.

Directed by festival directors Leon Cakoff and Renata de Almeida, the film followed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami during one of his visits to the city of São Paulo.

The list of international filmmakers (including Brazilian directors) consisted of Wolfgang Becker, Maria de Medeiros, Hanna Elias, Amos Gitai, Mika Kaurismäki, Jim McBride, Phillip Noyce, Ming-liang Tsai, Andrea Vecchiato, Caetano Veloso, Yoshishige Yoshida, Theo Angelopoulos, Gian Vittorio Baldi, Marcho Bechis, Laís Bodanzky, Beto Brant, Manoel de Oliveira, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, Jerzy Stuhr, and Wim Wenders.

The 38th edition of the São Paulo International Film Festival in 2014 featured retrospectives dedicated to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and the French distribution company MK2 founded by Marin Karmitz.