Last night, the 2026 Premio Grande Otelo awards show was livestreamed on YouTube. Subtitles weren't available during the livestream, but hopefully those become available at some point.
It's essentially a major awards show by the Brazilian Film Academy for Brazilian film and TV. Examples of similar awards shows are the Canadian Screen Awards by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the IFTA Awards by the Irish Film and Television Academy.
Since the results of the Premio Grande Otelo were announced, there has been a lot of online discussions about them. One of the major discussions is the Best Feature Film category, which ended up with a tie between Manas and The Secret Agent.
The Brazilian Film Academy on Instagram disabled the comments of those posts. It's uncertain why they did so. I noticed that the comments section on a post of Marianna Brennand holding her trophies for Mannas featured a lot of outrage.
In the comments section of a video discussing this, a person noted that the Brazilian Film Academy blocked people that left comments questioning the results and the ceremony.
The president of the Brazilian Film Academy Renata Almeida Magalhaes did an interview with Lucas Salgado from O Globo on August 7 addressing the backlash. Here's a few excerpts
Here's some of the responses on X/Twitter:
Time will tell if they'll address it publicly, but if I were to guess, it's not going to happen anytime soon unless if the outrage grows and starts conversations outside of social media.
The president of the Brazilian Film Academy Renata Almeida Magalhaes did an interview with Lucas Salgado from O Globo on August 7 addressing the backlash. Here
As I was watching the award show live, I wasn't sure if The Secret Agent was going to win the top prize because it lost most of the awards to the competition except for Cinematography, Art Direction and Visual Effects. When the film won Best Feature Film in a tie, I was obviously excited and thrilled for the win, but I was surprised in a way based on the results up to that point. I haven't seen Manas or any of the other films that won an award and can't comment on the quality of those films, but I imagined that it was competitive in comparison to last year when I'm Still Here practically swept with 13 wins.
There's multiple ways to view/interpret this. It's possible that the Brazilian Film Academy wanted to "spread the love" this year than awarding most of the awards to one film. Or the members preferred the other films that won over The Secret Agent. It's up to you to decide.
Some people brought up the controversy surrounding the country's selection process for the Oscars' International Feature Film category.
I remember seeing this during awards season and forgot to about bring this up when I did a video on The Secret Agent back in December.
Based on some of the recent online chatter, I think there's more to that situation than what was reported at the time. In a nutshell, last year, Manas and The Secret Agent were amongst the five films shortlisted by the Brazilian Film Academy. Many people believed that The Secret Agent would be the obvious pick because it won 4 awards (Best Director, Best Actor, FIPRESCI Prize and AFCAE Award) at Cannes Film Festival, received a lot of critical acclaim and was picked up by Neon for distribution in the US over Manas, which won a Director's award at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and received critical acclaim. There were reports of the Brazilian Film Academy choosing Manas over The Secret Agent, which created public backlash. As a result, they (reluctantly allegedly) chose The Secret Agent to represent Brazil for the Oscars.
It seems from the outside looking in that the Brazilian Film Academy preferred Manas over The Secret Agent for reasons outside of the film's quality. For the 2026 Goya Awards, Manas was submitted over The Secret Agent for the Ibero-American Film category, but lost to Belen. If The Secret Agent was submitted instead, would that have won instead of Belen? Who knows, but I bet the chances would have been higher. The Secret Agent dominated The Platino Awards back in May with 8 wins, which is impressive given that it beated the most nomated films Belen and Los Domingos with the amount of wins. It kind of reminded me of what happened with All We Imagine As Light when the Film Federation of India snubbed that film for Laapataa Ladies, which wasn't nominated for International Feature Film at the Oscars.
The key difference is that the Brazilian Film Academy chose The Secret Agent after public backlash, while the FFI doubled down on not selecting All We Imagine As Light despite public backlash. Essentially both films were the obvious picks to represent their countries at the Oscars after receiving a lot of accolades & critical acclaim. The Academy announced changes to the International Feature Film category at the Oscars back in May, which is a nice but it feels like a "one step forward two steps back" with the films having an alternative option for consideration if they win a key jury prize at select film festivals if they're not submitted by their hosting country.
Regardless, the cast and crew of The Secret Agent should be proud of not just the film itself but the amount of the accolades they received, which apparently is the most for a Brazilian film, and it will soon join films like All We Imagine As Light on the Criterion Collection. I would say that's a big accomplishment itself.
The president of the Brazilian Film Academy Renata Almeida Magalhaes did an interview with Lucas Salgado from O Globo on August 7 addressing the backlash. Here's a few excerpts that were translated in English by Google
