🎥 Oscar odds on

What happens to a society when an authoritarian regime takes power and erodes the rule of law? When the law no longer applies equally, is it enough for ordinary citizens to avoid confronting the government in order to remain unharmed?

These questions resonate sharply in today’s Brazil, where Congress has been working to shield former President Jair Bolsonaro and far-right lawmakers from criminal accountability. This week, the lower house not only rejected a motion to strip convicted lawmaker Carla Zambelli of her office (a move the Supreme Court has overruled) but also approved a bill that would reduce Bolsonaro’s 27-year prison sentence for leading a coup attempt after the 2022 election.

Under the international spotlight of film criticism, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s latest feature film offers a stark meditation on how the violent blueprint of dictatorships permeates everyday life. When laws cease to apply to everyone, petty power structures can corrupt and corrode social relations, life becomes disposable, and rights are subordinated to brute force and cronyism. In such a landscape, survival — and solidarity — become acts of resistance.

This is the terrain explored by “The Secret Agent,” set in 1977, during one of the most repressive phases of Brazil’s military dictatorship — a period whose legacy of brutality still echoes through Brazilian society. 

After “I’m Still Here” paved the way for Brazil’s success at the 2025 Academy Awards, “The Secret Agent” has been selected as the country’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2026 Oscars — and it has a good chance of coming away with a prize…

Don’t miss out! Upgrade to unlock full access. The process takes only seconds with Apple Pay or Stripe. Become a member.

We’re here for readers who want to truly understand Brazil and Latin America — a region too often ignored or misrepresented by the international media.

Since 2017, our reporting has been powered by paid subscribers. They’re the reason we can keep a full-time team of journalists across Brazil and Argentina, delivering sharp, independent coverage every day.

If you value our work, subscribing is the best way to keep it going — and growing.