If 2025 was the year of Brazil's return to the Oscars with Walter Salles and his 'Ainda Estou Aqui', 2026 is the year of consolidation with Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'O Agente Secreto'. The four nominations for Mendonça Filho's film for the highest award in seventh art ratified Brazil's new era on the international film scene for the second consecutive year. The success of the film, which has accumulated over two million viewers in the domestic market, marked a turning point for an industry accustomed to retreating to its own borders but now seeking to compete globally from its own cultural identity. But what is the reason for this boom? Something that has happened with 'O Agente Secreto' but also with 'Ainda Estou Aqui' and many other titles. According to the president of the Brazilian Academy of Cinema, Renata Almeida Magalhães, filmmakers discovered that the paradox of success lies precisely in 'rediscovering' the country 'without being a Hollywood pastiche'. 'Brazil is a character' and is 'wonderfully well-portrayed' in films highly valued abroad, according to Magalhães. An island that breaks its isolation. Brazil has historically been described as a continental island in a predominantly Spanish-speaking region dominated by Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony. However, the impact of its cultural ambassadors allowed that border to dissolve. And Petra Costa, who won the Oscar for best documentary with 'Democracia em Vertigem' (2020). Exalting the national identity. 'O Agente Secreto', starring Wagner Moura, paints a picture of life in Brazil in 1977, ravaged by almost fifteen years of a fierce dictatorship, from the perspective of a university researcher persecuted by regime members. During the three-hour film, the director spares no detail for the domestic audience. The dialogue is full of 'Brazilianisms', with urban legends from Recife that are even strange to many nationals. Its characters sweat through their shirts in the suffocating heat of the Brazilian northeast, the streets surrender to Carnival and the fashionable vinyl records of Música Popular Brasileira (MPB) sound. This decision by directors not to disguise their works to make them easier for a foreign audience to digest has forced the global market to enter the Brazilian universe on its own terms. The South American giant, which has exported musicians of universal stature to the world, had not yet managed to make its cinema fashionable in a sustained way, despite almost 130 years having passed since its foundational milestone, when the Italo-Brazilian Affonso Segreto filmed Guanabara Bay (Rio de Janeiro) with a Lumière camera. The three nominations for 'Ainda estou aqui' (2024) broke a two-decade drought of Brazilian films in the main fiction categories after the breakthrough in 2004 with 'Cidade de Deus' by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, which was nominated in four categories but went home empty-handed. In that time, without success, Alê Abreu and Carlos Saldanha were nominated for best animated film with 'O Menino e o Mundo' (2016) and 'Ferdinand' (2018), respectively. Figures like Wagner Moura putting a face on global-reaching productions, such as the series 'Narcos' (2015-2016) or the film 'Civil War' (2024), served as a bridge. Moura, who always reserves a phrase of his speech in Portuguese, not only brings his accent to the Hollywood industry but uses it to draw attention to the cinema of his homeland. This relevance built over the years earned him a place on the list of the 50 most influential people in the United States, according to The Washington Post, which recognized him as an artist who takes a public stand on his political convictions. This phenomenon allowed directors like Mendonça Filho or Salles to find a more fertile ground to tell their stories than their predecessors, such as Glauber Rocha, a reference of the critical Cinema Novo of the 60s; or Carlos 'Cacá' Diegues, author of classics like 'Bye Bye Brasil' (1979) and 'Xica da Silva' (1976). As Fernanda Torres noted in an interview with EFE, these nominations are steps that contribute to 'paving the long avenue' that others began to build over the years. Photo EFE. The Oscar speaks Portuguese again: Brazil tests its cinema for the second year in a row. This article was first published in La Verdad Panamá.
