For the first time ever in the history of Golden Globe Awards, a Brazilian star has won the Best Actor in a Drama accolade.
On Sunday, January 11, Wagner Moura made history as Brazil’s first actor to bag Best Drama Actor award for his crime-thriller movie, The Secret Agent, at the 2026 Golden Globes.
Held at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, the event saw the 49-year-old actor accepting the prize for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama).
After receiving the accolade, the Civil War actor expressed gratitude to the film’s makers and labelled his fellow nominees “extraordinary.”
"The Secret Agent is a film about memory, or the lack of memory, and generational trauma. I think that, if trauma can be passed along generations, values can too. So this is to the ones that are sticking with their values in difficult moments,” Moura stated.
Backstage at the Golden Globes, the actor gave his take on why the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985 in the country, is such an important topic in modern Brazilian film.
"I think we have to keep making films about the dictatorship. The dictatorship is still an open scar in our Brazilian life. It happened 50 years ago only. We recently had — from 2018 to 2022 — a far-right-wing president in Brazil-slash=fascist that was a physical manifestation of the echoes of the dictatorship,” he noted.
The Elite Squad star added, “The dictatorship is still very present in Brazilian daily life, so we have to keep making films about it."
Released on November 6, 2025, The Secret Agent features Wagner Moura play a former university professor named Armando attempting to evade political persecution by agents of Brazil's military dictatorship in 1977.
