Legendary Weapons of China 

On his Friday, March 13th episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, the late-night host brought up the #OscarsSoWhite movement to claim its mission is no longer needed. Maher argued that the Academy does not overlook “minority achievement” anymore and told the #OscarsSoWhite movement to “take the win.”

A long history of white-dominated Oscars award winners and nominees would say otherwise. Although we’ve made much progress in 2026, underrepresented groups are still just that: underrepresented. According to The Inclusion List, of the 218 Oscar nominees in 2026, 28% were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group, and 33% were women. Maher was right in one thing, though: we have made progress. Equality and equity in the film industry may have yet to be achieved, but 2026 ranks highest in Oscars history for its representation of minorities in all categories, and that’s definitely something to be celebrated.

In Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent, the sociopolitical climate of Brazil in 1977 is depicted by the exchange of characters on screen, verbal and nonverbal. It didn’t introduce the circumstance of the protagonist, Marcelo/Armando, at the beginning and didn’t mention that “Marcelo” was a fake name until the middle of the film. Instead, a sequence at the gas station opened the film, introducing the situation of Brazil in the 70s. Besides Marcelo, who arrived in a signature yellow Volkswagen Beetle, other characters in this scene only appeared once. During this sequence, the camera kept panning to a dead body facing down on the ground as futile attempts to seize comprehension. A police duo only stopped to harass Marcelo for bribery because they assumed someone in a Beetle would get some money, neglecting the corpse. Some carnival-goers passed by in a car and decided not to stop due to the sight of police. On the side, the stray dogs constantly tried to nudge the body, while only the kind shop owner was cursing them away again and again. The bribery and corruption of the public departments are embodied in the mannerisms of those twisted individuals in public and private sectors. The military dictatorship isn’t explicit in language but in the contingencies of persons’ lives. As a subplot, an imaginary story of one hairy leg mixed the fiction and the real life, which made a sarcastic commentary on the police violence and corruption.