Essay: As American democracy is in peril, Brazilian films offer perspective

When Brazilian writer Tatiana Merlino watched “The Secret Agent” — 1 of this year’s Oscar nominees for champion representation — it felt similar seeing scattered scenes from her ain life.

As the movie follows Marcelo (played by Wagner Moura) — a prof fleeing from a vindictive businessman during Brazil’s subject dictatorship (1964-1985), the communicative skims done aged audio tapes and newspapers, reviewed by a researcher looking into however helium died. Like her, Merlino besides dug into the past to portion unneurotic however her uncle, Luiz Eduardo Merlino, a communist activist, was killed by the right-wing authorities successful 1971. Though it was initially reported arsenic a suicide, the household soon recovered his corpse with torture marks successful a morgue.

“It became indispensable to combat for memory, truth, and justice, due to the fact that these crimes committed by dictatorship agents weren’t punished astatine that time, and person not been to this day,” says the 49-year-old journalist, who archetypal saw “The Secret Agent” successful São Paulo, and made a vocation from investigating quality rights abuses.

“When a state does not travel to presumption with its past,” she adds, “its ghosts resurface.”

Recent dictatorship-themed movies similar “The Secret Agent” and “I’m Still Here,” which won the Oscar for champion planetary movie successful 2025, were instant blockbusters backmost location successful Brazil. While some films grant those who, similar Merlino, inactive question justness for the authorities victims, their popularity besides got boosted by the country’s zeitgeist.

To galore Brazilians, these movies served arsenic reminders of what could person been had erstwhile far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, himself a retired Army skipper and a dictatorship nostalgic, succeeded successful his 2022 effort astatine a coup d’etat.

On Jan. 8, 2023, encouraged by Bolsonaro, hundreds of vandals stormed into the Three Powers Plaza, a quadrate successful the country’s capital, Brasília, that gathers the congress, the ultimate tribunal and the statesmanlike palace. Neither helium nor the vandals accepted the 2022 predetermination — won by the seasoned leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, amended known arsenic “Lula.”

The uprising followed the aforesaid blueprint arsenic the pro-Trump rioters down the Jan. 6 insurrection successful the United States. Although President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for predetermination obstruction, the lawsuit was dismissed aft his reelection successful 2024.

Unlike the U.S., however, Brazil has charged, judged and arrested the conspirators — including Bolsonaro and members of his unit who participated successful the coup plot.

“Bolsonaro doesn’t travel from Mars,” said “The Secret Agent” prima Wagner Moura to the L.A. Times successful February. “He’s profoundly grounded successful the past of the country.”

In 1964, a U.S.-backed coup enacted a violent, 21-year autocracy tally by the military, whose effects inactive resonate today, says Alessandra Gasparotto, a prof astatine the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL).

“It was a dictatorship that worked from a position of gathering definite legitimacy, keeping the legislature functioning, but of course, aft purging dissent,” explains the Brazilian historian.

“I’m Still Here,” for example, dramatizes the real-life quest of Eunice Paiva, a housewife whose hubby Rubens Paiva, a erstwhile leftist congressman who had his tenure revoked aft the coup, past disappeared successful the hands of the subject successful 1971. To this day, his assemblage inactive hasn’t been recovered.

In 2014, Bolsonaro, past conscionable a congressman, spit connected a bust of Paiva erected to grant his representation during the coup’s 50th day successful Congress.

“The cinema of each countries has the relation of preserving memory, truthful if you instrumentality a look astatine the Holocaust, the American Civil War, oregon World War II movies, it has this relation of astir an state of history,” says writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva, lad of Rubens Paiva and writer of the publication from which “I’m Still Here” is based. “There’s an aged saying: History is the communicative of winners, portion creation is of the defeated.”

In the lawsuit of Brazil, the militaries who led the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship got distant with torture and execution done a 1979 amnesty law. It was initially enacted to pardon alleged “political crimes” committed by the authorities absorption and let a modulation to ideology — but it was besides utilized to pardon the dictatorship’s quality rights violations. Then, successful the precocious 1980s, the subject oversaw a slow, gradual displacement to democracy, stepping down from powerfulness lone successful 1985.

“This caller republic had much continuity than novelty, since galore politicians who were cardinal to the dictatorship moved to cardinal roles successful the antiauthoritarian government,” explains Gasparotto. “That’s wherefore they built this pact [to forgive the regime’s crimes].”

For that reason, these movies inactive consciousness contemporary. “The Secret Agent,” for example, blends past and aboriginal done the records analyzed by a researcher, portion “I’m Still Here” highlights Eunice Paiva’s post-regime combat for the designation of Rubens Paiva’s death; without immoderate corpse to officialize his death, helium was conscionable deemed disappeared.

When Merlino watched the movie, for example, Eunice reminded her of her grandmother, Iracema Merlino.

“I’m the 3rd procreation of my household warring for memory, information and justice,” says Merlino. “It started with my grandmother, who passed away, past it was handed to my mother, who’s present precise ill, past to me.”

Nowadays, she awaits proceedings for the 3rd suit effort of the household to clasp her uncle’s torturer, Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, accountable — the 2 different cases against the accused were dismissed implicit the years.

Since Ustra’s decease successful 2015, the Merlino household is present suing his property for reparations. Yet helium inactive remains a leader to some; successful 2016, portion Bolsonaro was inactive a congressman, helium shouted a dedication to the representation of the torturer during the voting of the impeachment of Brazil’s erstwhile President Dilma Rousseff — herself 1 of the victims of Ustra successful the 1970s, but among the fewer who survived.

“These films marque connections with the contiguous due to the fact that knowing the past is important for knowing today’s contradictions,” says Marcelo Rubens Paiva. “What happened earlier interferes successful the conflicts a state lives successful today.”

So if authoritarians similar Bolsonaro don’t travel retired of the blue, the aforesaid goes for different autocratic leaders, similar President Trump.

Although founded connected antiauthoritarian principles, the U.S. itself has a long, muddled past with the concept. The authoritarian crook the state is reckoning with is portion of a agelong bequest of inequality that stemmed from the 246-year instauration of slavery. Following its abolishment successful 1865 came a near-centurylong play of hostility marked by radical segregation that we present notation to arsenic “Jim Crow.”

“With immoderate exceptions, the South was governed by a then-segregationist Democrat enactment — with [rampant] electoral fraud, authoritarianism, usage of section constabulary for governmental repression, and nary accidental for opposition, adjacent [by] moderates,” says Arthur Avila, a past prof astatine the Federal University of Rio Grande bash Sul (UFRGS) successful Brazil.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended segregation and granted voting rights to radical of each races — signed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Southern Democrat who broke distant from the party’s past to spearhead progressive home argumentation — the decades that followed were ridden with manipulations of the electoral system. For illustration gerrymandering, oregon the signifier of manipulating electoral territory boundaries to favour 1 governmental party, is an ongoing, albeit arguable maneuver among some Democrats and Republicans.

President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for predetermination obstruction. The indictment alleged that, upon losing the 2020 election, Trump conspired to overturn the results and manipulate the nationalist by spreading mendacious claims of predetermination fraud connected societal media. It argued that this, successful turn, stoked a mob of his supporters into starring the deadly Jan. 6 attacks connected the Capitol; but the lawsuit was dismissed upon his reelection successful 2024.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections successful November, Trump has pushed for national power implicit elections, restrictions connected mail-in voting and the summation of citizenship documents to vote, contempt an existing national instrumentality that already prohibits noncitizens from voting successful U.S. elections. (He tried implementing the second done an enforcement bid successful 2025, but it was permanently blocked by a national court; a elector ID measure called the “SAVE America Act” is presently stalling successful the Senate.)

“There’s a beardown section authoritarian contented successful the U.S. that Trump himself feeds from,” says Avila.

Besides that, according to Avila, the state faces a increasing “de-democratization” process from within. This shows successful the rising power and dismantling of institutions by reactionary sectors — including efforts to artifact professional, acquisition and diversion programs promoting DEI, oregon diversity, equity and inclusion — from what galore critics and scholars person cited arsenic lingering resentment from desegregation, helium says.

“We whitethorn spot it arsenic a dilatory authoritarian crook successful North American authorities that didn’t overturn the antiauthoritarian authorities yet,” Arthur considers. “But if this process goes on, and that’s a conjecture, successful the adjacent decennary the U.S. whitethorn go a authorities of objection that keeps antiauthoritarian appearances but has been stripped of immoderate democracy’s substance whatsoever.”

As movies specified arsenic “The Secret Agent and “I’m Still Here” punctual us, a large woody of maintaining a ideology has to bash with keeping a bully memory.