Lula’s Investment in Anti-Fascist Brazilian Films Wins Big at Golden Globes
The Oscar nominations contained a surprising big winner: Brazil’s The Secret Agent, about the resistance to the military junta in the country in the 1970s, received four nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Wagner Moura. This story from our friends at Payday Report goes into the backstory of how the leftist Brazilian government has revived the film industry as a voice for social justice.
As the music rose to signal him to wrap up and exit the stage, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who had just won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film for the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent, kept on talking.
“I dedicated this film to young filmmakers. This is a very important moment,” Filho continued as the music rose. “This is a very important time in the history of making films. Here in the U.S. and in Brazil, young American filmmakers make films,” Filho shouted as the music started to drown him out.
Later in the night, Wagner Moura became the first Brazilian to win the Golden Globe for Best Actor for his role as a professor on the run from gun thugs during the 1977 Brazilian dictatorship. Filho said he wrote the role specifically for Moura after the two became friends over their shared politics and opposition to the right-wing Bolsonaro administration.
“Secret Agent is a film about memory or the lack of memory and generational trauma,” Moura said at the Golden Globes. “I think, if trauma can be passed along to generations, values can too, so this is for the ones that are sticking to those values in difficult moments.”
Moura spoke in Portuguese to thank all the Brazilians back home. “To everyone in Brazil, watching this now, long live Brazilian culture. Long live Brazilian culture!”
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the autoworker union leader turned president of Brazil, posted on social media photos of him, his wife, and both Moura and Filho celebrating their film. Under Lula, the Brazilian government has heavily invested in Brazilian cinema, including The Secret Agent.
“The Secret Agent is an essential movie to not forget the violence of the dictatorship and the resilience of the Brazilian people,” wrote Lula.
The film was the most-awarded movie at 2025’s Cannes Film Festival, where Filho won Best Director and Moura Best Actor. It also picked up the Art House Cinema Award and the Fipresci Prize for Best Film. It’s been nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor for Moura, Best International Film, and Achievement in Casting.
In recent years, Lula’s investment in subsidizing anti-fascist Brazilian films has paid off in a big way, finding audiences in America and elsewhere overseas. Under Lula, the Brazilian government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in tax incentives and subsidies in cinema. The foreign tour of The Secret Agent is being sponsored by Petrobras, the state-owned oil company of Brazil.
At a time when American democracy is in shambles, Americans are flocking in record numbers to see films about anti-fascist movements in Brazil.
While Trump is in his second term in office, Brazil successfully prosecuted former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and sentenced him to 27 years in prison for attempting to orchestrate a coup. The renewed attention to Brazilian anti-fascist films and Brazil’s political history has been warmly welcomed by Lula, whose stature has been enhanced by Brazilian box office records being broken in American cinemas.
“As Wagner himself has put it, Brazilian cinema has been mobilizing attention and respect from people in all regions, and it has been an important symbol of the return of the appreciation of artists in our country,” Lula wrote in this third Instagram post of the day about The Secret Agent’s wins at the Golden Globes.
Under Lula’s watch, Brazilian cinema, with public investment, has undergone a dramatic revival and achieved unprecedented success in American markets, changing Americans’ perceptions of Brazil.
It began last year with the film I’m Still Here, the first Brazilian film to win an Oscar, becoming the highest-grossing Brazilian film of all time. Fernanda Torres won the Golden Globe for Best Actress.
The movie follows the disappearance of Brazilian Congressman Rubens Paiva during the dictatorship in 1970. His wife, Eunice Paiva, spent 45 years searching for answers to what happened.
Torres, who played Paiva’s widow, became the first Brazilian woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Both the movie and the award provided an education to American activists who previously knew little about the Brazilian dictatorship.
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