RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilians celebrated the nomination of “The Secret Agent” film to four Oscar categories on Thursday, which many said confirmed the rise of Brazilian cinema and its universal appeal.
“The Secret Agent” — nominated for best picture, best actor, best international film and achievement in casting — now shares Brazil's record for nominations, alongside the famed 2002 film “City of God” set in a favela in Rio de Janeiro.
“The Secret Agent” follows a widowed father — played by Wagner Moura — who becomes a target of Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s simply because he stands up to a business owner with ties to the regime.
Director Kleber Mendonça Filho said that more than one million spectators have seen the film, in a video posted on social media Thursday following the nominations.
Last year, Brazilian feature film “I’m Still Here” was also a box office success, drawing millions of moviegoers. It was nominated in three categories and won best international feature, giving Brazil its first Oscar.
The back-to-back successes are leading many to say that Brazil is living a particularly fruitful moment for its cinema — including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who said that the local industry is currently “experiencing one of the best moments in its history.”
The nominations are “recognition of our culture and of Brazil’s ability to tell stories that move the world,” he said on social media.
“I’m Still Here” is also set during the dictatorship, and observers say both films have contributed to nationwide discussion about the dark period in Brazil's history from 1964 to 1985, when people were tortured and disappeared.
Lúcia Espírito Santo, a 78-year-old retired lawyer, said that she herself had to watch her words when she was studying law at university for fear of disappearing.
“What we see in the film happened a lot. People would disappear and you didn’t know why. Friends of mine from college disappeared because they spoke out, they advocated for freedom and democracy,” she said, exiting the cinema after seeing the film.
Sabrina Guimarães, a 20-year-old student at a Rio de Janeiro university, who went to see the film Thursday, said learning about the country’s history is essential.
“Even though we learn this stuff at school, we don’t spend much time on it and it’s not very specific. Feeling like you’re there in the person’s shoes, knowing what was happening at the time is very interesting,” she said.
“It’s good to understand what happened in the past so we don’t repeat these things in the future.”
Director Mendonça Filho said the film is a reaction to Brazil's past decade of political turmoil, including the far-right administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who last year was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for attempting a coup.
But the film also dialogues with the political climate in other places around the world, he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
“The film is very Brazilian, but it’s also universal, so it can be used to discuss issues in the United States, in Europe or in Brazil,” Mendonça Filho said. “The theme of power being used to crush people and social classes is a theme that’s current, not just historical.”
Casting director Gabriel Domingues, who was nominated in the new category of “achievement in casting,” said the outpouring of support for the film reflects broader enthusiasm for Brazilian cinema.
“Brazilian cinema is really in a moment of intense emotion, beyond just excitement. People get very moved, with this participation in international events and awards and everything,” Domingues told The Associated Press, comparing it to Brazil's atmosphere around soccer.
Ana Paula Sousa, an expert in cinema and teacher at the ESPM University in Sao Paulo, said that the achievements of “I’m Still Here” and “The Secret Agent” are changing Brazilians’ relation to the film industry in a country were movie attendance is historically low.
“People are talking about Brazilian cinema and thinking it’s cool to talk about it. (…) That's something we didn’t see before, and it’s really great,” she said.
Sousa said she hopes the successes will spark more consistent movie attendance among Brazilians.
Espírito Santo, the elderly moviegoer in Rio, said that she was incredibly proud of Brazilian cinema following the Oscar nominations.
“We’re showing up, stepping onto the red carpet abroad,” she said. “Brazil is starting to look like a producer of films, of well-told stories.”
Tatiana Pollastri contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.
A person buys a ticket for the Oscar-nominated film, The Secret Agent, at a self-service ticket kiosk, at a movie theater in Sao Paulo, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
A billboard promoting the Oscar-nominated film The Secret Agent is displayed outside a movie theater in Sao Paulo, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)
CAIRO (AP) — The Iranian security agents came at 2 a.m., pulling up in a half-dozen cars outside the home of the Nakhii family. They woke up the sleeping sisters, Nyusha and Mona, and forced them to give the passwords for their phones. Then they took the two away.
The women were accused of participating in the nationwide protests that shook Iran a week earlier, a friend of the pair told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for her security as she described the Jan. 16 arrests.
Such arrests have been happening for weeks following the government crackdown last month that crushed the protests calling for the end of the country’s theocratic rule. Reports of raids on homes and workplaces have come from major cities and rural towns alike, revealing a dragnet that has touched large swaths of Iranian society. University students, doctors, lawyers, teachers, actors, business owners, athletes and filmmakers have been swept up, as well as reformist figures close to President Masoud Pezeshkian.
They are often held incommunicado for days or weeks and prevented from contacting family members or lawyers, according to activists monitoring the arrests. That has left desperate relatives searching for their loved ones.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has put the number of arrests at more than 50,000. The AP has been unable to verify the figure. Tracking the detainees has been difficult since Iranian authorities imposed an internet blackout, and reports leak out only with difficulty.
Other activist groups outside Iran have also been working to document the sweeps.
“Authorities continue to identify people and detain them,” said Shiva Nazarahari, an organizer with one of those groups, the Committee for Monitoring the Status of Detained Protesters.
So far, the committee has verified the names of more than 2,200 people who were arrested, using direct reports from families and a network of contacts on the ground. The arrestees include 107 university students, 82 children as young as 13, as well as 19 lawyers and 106 doctors.
Nazarahari said authorities have been reviewing municipal street cameras, store surveillance cameras and drone footage to track people who participated in the protests to their homes or places of work, where they are arrested.
The protests began in late December, triggered by anger over spiraling prices, and quickly spread across the country. They peaked on Jan. 8 and 9, when hundreds of thousands of people in more than 190 cities and towns across the country took to the streets.
Security forces responded by unleashing unprecedented violence. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has so far counted more than 7,000 dead and says the true number is far higher. Iran’s government offered its only death toll on Jan. 21, saying 3,117 people were killed. The theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from past unrest.
Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi, a hard-line cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, became the face of the crackdown, labeling protesters “terrorists” and calling for fast-tracked punishments.
Since then, “detentions have been very widespread because it’s like a whole suffocation of society,” said one protester, reached by the AP in Gohardasht, a middle-class area outside the Iranian capital. He said two of his relatives and three of his brother’s friends were killed in the first days of the crackdown, as well as several neighbors. The protester spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by authorities.
The Nakhii sisters, 37-year-old Nyusha and 25-year-old Mona, were first taken to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where they were allowed to contact their parents, their friend said. Later, she said, they were moved to Qarchak, a women’s prison on the outskirts of Tehran where rights groups reported conditions that included overcrowding and lack of hygiene even before the crackdown.
Other people whose arrests were documented by the detainees committee have disappeared into the prisons. The family of Abolfazl Jazbi has not heard from him since his Jan. 15 arrest at a factory in the southern city of Isfahan. Jazbi suffers from a severe blood disorder that requires medication, according to the committee.
Atila Sultanpour, 45, has not been heard from since he was taken from his home in Tehran on Jan. 29 by security agents who beat him severely, according to Dadban, a group of Iranian lawyers based abroad who are also documenting detentions.
Authorities have also moved to suspend bank accounts, block SIM cards and confiscate the property of protesters' relatives or people who publicly express support for them, said Musa Barzin, an attorney with Dadban, citing reports from families.
In past crackdowns on protests, authorities sometimes adhered to a veneer of due process and rule of law, but not this time, Barzin said. Authorities are increasingly denying detainees access to legal counsel and often holding them for days or weeks before allowing any phone calls to family. Lawyers representing arrested protesters also have faced court summons and detention, according to Dadban.
“The following of the law is in the worst situation it has ever been,” Barzin said.
Despite the crackdown, many civic groups continue to issue defiant statements.
The Writers’ Association of Iran, an independent group with a long tradition of dissent, issued a statement describing the protests as an uprising against “47 years of systemic corruption and discrimination.”
It also announced that two of its members had been detained, including a member of its secretariat.
A national council representing schoolteachers urged families to speak out about detained children and students. “Do not fear the threats of security forces. Refer to independent counsel. Make your children’s names public,” it said in a statement.
A spokesman for the council said Sunday that it has documented the deaths of at least 200 minors who were killed in the crackdown. That figure is up several dozen from the count just days before.
“Every day we tell ourselves this is the last list,” Mohammad Habibi wrote on X. “But the next morning, new names arrive again.”
Bar associations and medical groups have also spoken out, including Iran’s state-sanctioned doctors council, which called on authorities to stop harassing medical staff.
Anger over the bloodshed now adds to the bitterness over the economy, which has been hollowed out by decades of sanctions, corruption and mismanagement. The value of the currency has plunged, and inflation has climbed to record levels.
The Iranian government has announced gestures such as launching a new coupon program for essential goods. Labor and trade groups, including a national retirees syndicate, have issued statements condemning the economic and political crisis.
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has moved an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the Persian Gulf and suggested the U.S. could attack Iran over the killing of peaceful demonstrators or if Tehran launches mass executions over the protests. A second American aircraft carrier is on its way to the Mideast.
Iran’s theocracy has faced down protests and U.S. threats in the past, and the crackdown showed the iron grip it holds over the country. This week, authorities organized pro-government rallies with hundreds of thousands of people to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Still, Barzin said, he sees the ferocity of the crackdown as a sign that Iran’s leadership “for the first time is afraid of being overthrown.”
Associated Press Writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
FILE - In this image from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, File)
FILE - In this image from video circulating on social media, protesters dance and cheer around a bonfire as they take to the streets of Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, File)
FILE - In this image from video made by an individual not employed by The Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran, people block an intersection during a protest in Tehran, Iran, on Jan. 8, 2026. (UGC via AP, File)
