Brazilian fans have mobilised with fierce loyalty to secure their favourite actress her long-overdue gold statue. In this day and age where adoration goes militant, their campaign is a case study of how fan-driven movements are changing the dynamics of film appreciation.
On the day the damaging tweets of Spanish actress and Emilia Pérez-star (Jacques Audiard, 2024, above) Karla Sofia Gascón resurfaced, film critic Luis A. Mendez, with a tone that seemed equal parts bewildered and shell-shocked, tweeted: “The lesson I’ve learned today is, don’t fuck with Brazilian Twitter.”
As of today, the tweet already had gained 83,000 likes and more than 7,000 reposts – pretty much all of them from Brazilians, who responded with memes and a satisfied nod of approval, as if they were wearing their digital defiance as a badge of honour.
The feeling was not entirely unjustified. Since December, when the Golden Globes nominees were announced, a very structured, almost militant campaign has been carried out on social media. The digital battalion, chiefly made up of fans of the actress Fernanda Torres, has been laser-focussed on securing its heroine with the ultimate golden statue, defending her performance at all costs and erasing any obstacle in its path.
For many Brazilians, Torres’ Oscar campaign is not just about her performance in Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here (2024), it’s about righting a historical wrong. In 1999, Torres’s mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was nominated for best actress for her role in Central Station (1998), also directed by Salles, only to lose to Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love (John Madden, 1998). Brazilians still consider Montenegro’s loss today an unforgivable snub, a lost chance for their cinema to finally reach the world stage. The weight of unfinished business weighs strongly upon Torres’ campaign: a chance to reclaim the golden statue that many believe was unjustly denied to her mother 25 years ago. It isn’t just about Torres; this is about legacy, pride and the feeling that history owes them one.
Oscar campaigns have always carried a political subtext, but this season, the phenomenon feels distinctly different. Fanbases, particularly those mobilised through social media, no longer settle for merely championing their favourites. Instead, they operate with the scorched-earth ethos of an online militia, punishing dissent, silencing critics and rewriting the narrative in real time.
Ready For War
The first sign that Torres’s fans were ready to go to war came when the French newspaper Le Monde dared to publish a one-star review of I’m Still Here (above). In what would become an infamous highly discussed review in Brazilian soil, film critic Jacques Mandelbaum dismissed Torres’s performance as monochord; a word which, to the uninitiated, might sound like a type of musical instrument but, in this very inflammable context, landed with the grace of a piano dropped from a balcony.
Within hours, Le Monde‘s social media channels were inundated with thousands of angry comments in Portuguese — some mocking the review with slicing wit, others calling it slanderous, xenophobic and even politically motivated. The controversy spread like wildfire, with Brazilian media breathlessly covering the outlet’s “invasion” and some even dissecting the meaning of the word “monochord” as if it were a cryptographic clue in the middle of a national emergency. Overwhelmed, the newspaper eventually limited comments and deleted more than 21,600 offensive posts, a virtual purge that felt less like moderation and more like a white flag raised in defeat.
If France was the opening act, Argentina provided the encore. During a segment on the TV show La Ciudad, three hosts made a casual, mildly dismissive remark about Torres’s red carpet appearance at the Golden Globes: “She was so not expecting to win that she didn’t even comb her hair”. It was the kind of throwaway line that might have been shrugged off in another era. But for this historical juncture, it was like tossing a match into a powder keg. Unsurprisingly, that one comment set off another wave of outrage. The Argentine hosts Victoria Casaurang, Paula Galoni and Mercedes Cordero were accused of mocking Torres out of jealousy, showing blatant disregard for Brazilian culture. Their social media accounts soon became inundated with relentless attacks, ultimately forcing them to deactivate their profiles, while their network issued a timid statement on “respecting artistic expression.”
By that point, social media’s witch hunters were off the leash. A few days after that, in an interview with the Brazilian news portal Metrópoles, Karla Sofía Gascón complained about the barrage of hate she was enduring from Brazilian fans: “What I can’t stand is that every time I give an interview or appear on a TV show, the comments flood in with ‘Fernanda is the best, you are shit.’”
In an attempt to ease the rising tide of animosity, Fernanda Torres took to Instagram, pleading with her fans not to target her fellow nominee, but instead to “give her love.” It was a gesture both noble and a little naïve, like stepping into a storm armed with nothing but an umbrella.
Unleashing The Mob
Things got worse when Gascón (above), in another interview with the Brazilian media, this time with one of their biggest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, now accused those directly working with Torres of “tearing me and Emilia Pérez down.” Her remarks not only set off another wave of outrage, but articles started circulating that she had violated Oscar rules and therefore should be expelled from the race. By this time, the online mob had already been completely unleashed.
Gascón quickly issued a statement clarifying that her words were a response to the toxic, violent hate speech she had encountered on social media. But before she could fully control the narrative, a coup de grâce was delivered on the morning of January 30: a series of offensive tweets from past years resurfaced, in which Gascón had disparaged Muslims, Black people, the Oscars’ diversity politics, and even one in defence of Hitler for “simply having an opinion about Jews”. The timing was catastrophic. A week earlier, she had been celebrated as the historic first openly transgender nominee in the best actress category; now she found herself cast as public enemy number one. Even after the lengthy apology that followed, the damage was irreparable.
Freelance culture writer Sarah Hagi, a Canada-based journalist, was credited with uncovering the damaging tweets, though many on platform X quickly linked the entire debacle to the fervour of Brazilian online activism. What was striking was how the campaign was framed — not as an effort to hold Gascón accountable, but as a meticulously orchestrated takedown operation. The outrage didn’t seem like a spontaneous outpouring of principled dissent; instead, many online pointed to it as a calculated effort to clear the path for any of the remaining nominees.
Ironically, just as the Brazilian contingent was operating at its zenith, another scandal erupted: a resurfaced video of Torres in blackface from a past performance 20 years before. For a moment, it seemed the fanbase might divert its energy toward damage control. Yet, true to form, they doubled down, arguing that Torres was being unfairly scrutinised, that context mattered, and that this controversy was a deliberate distraction to undermine her Oscar prospects. The very mechanism unleashed against Gascón was now dismissed as irrelevant when it threatened their own camp.
The Politics of IMDb Ratings
This is not the first time Brazilian audiences have mobilized en masse. In 2016, when the country was amid a deep polarization, then-president Dilma Rousseff faced an impeachment that her supporters widely characterised as a political coup. Amidst the turmoil, Kleber Mendonça Filho arrived at Cannes with Aquarius (above), a film about a woman defying powerful economic forces. The film’s cast and crew staged a red carpet protest denouncing the impeachment and warning that Brazil’s democracy was under threat. Conservative groups in Brazil retaliated by organising a campaign to flood IMDb with low ratings before the film had even reached the general public. The controversy only crystallised Aquarius as a symbolic gesture of resistance, underlining how Brazilian cinema had evolved into a battleground for ideological struggle.
A similar dynamic played out with Marighella (Wagner Moura). Premiering at Berlinale in 2019, months before its domestic release, the film, chronicling the life of a Brazilian communist revolutionary, also became the target of a coordinated campaign of negative reviews. This backlash, emerging in the context of far-right political shifts under President Jair Bolsonaro, was so intense that IMDb temporarily blocked Brazilian IP addresses to safeguard the integrity of the film’s rating.
The Fans’ Will
More recently, another incident on Letterboxd, the social haven for cinephiles, underscored the tension between organic appreciation and orchestrated influence. For years, the Guel Arraes’ 2000 Brazilian comedy O Auto da Compadecida (A Dog’s Will, above) had basked in the glow of its fifth-place ranking on the platform’s prestigious Top 250 list, its high rating a symbol of national pride. A non-Brazilian user named ZombAid, perplexed by the film’s revered status, one day dropped a one-star review (later updating it to two), seemingly challenging the very foundation of its acclaim. That single criticism opened the floodgates for a spate of impassioned responses by Brazilian fans, calling his remarks no less than a desecration of their national treasure and turning his humble rating into an emblem of cultural sacrilege. With each new comment lashing out at the “clueless gringo,” the review got a new edit. It had been rewritten so many times that the latest version came with a sardonic addendum: “Dear Brazilian Letterboxd Community: Could you please get a grip on Life?!”
However, in 2023, Letterboxd introduced a new algorithm aimed at preventing mass upvoting from distorting rankings. Almost overnight, A Dog’s Will dropped from its lofty 4.8-star average to a 3.9, vanishing from the top 250 list entirely. The backlash was immediate. For many Brazilian users, this was not just an adjustment to an esoteric ranking system — it was an erasure, a devaluation of their cultural contributions to global cinephilia.
A Substantial Advantage?
What happened with Emilia Pérez, Karla Sofía Gascón, Fernanda Torres, and I’m Still Here is not entirely new in the scandal-ridden history of Oscar campaigns. Yet this time, the Brazilian fan fervour appears to have backfired. Their eagerness to clear the path for Torres may well have undermined her chances in the process, leaving an indelible mark on the film’s legacy.
While fan campaigns may generate hype, they risk alienating a voter base from campaigns perceived as too militant or manipulative. The Brazilian fan base’s tactics of weaponising controversy may have inadvertently turned Torres into a polarising figure rather than a unifying one. For voters already wary of external pressures, the spectacle of a militant fandom might feel less like grassroots support and more like a calculated siege. In the end, the very fervour meant to propel her to victory could end up casting her as the face of a campaign that feels, to some, more like coercion than celebration.
Amidst the chaos, one actress emerged relatively unbruised: Demi Moore. Nominated for The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024, above), Moore somehow made it through the minefield of digital warfare unscathed. In an Oscar race decided by a handful of votes, the implosions around Torres and Gascón served to place Moore as the safest, least divisive choice. She stands in the dust as the neutral alternative in a landscape too marred by scandal to be judged on merit alone.
Is Fandom Eroding Cinephilia?
All of this is to say that the Brazilian fandom is like any other — passionate, defensive, and deeply invested in its chosen idol. But the sheer intensity and mobilisation on display raises a larger question: is fandom eroding cinephilia? Once upon a time, to love a film meant to engage with its ideas, debate its artistic choices and wrestle with its cultural significance. Now, it typically means taking to arms in a digital battlefield, where dissent is treason, critics are enemies and victory is measured in ratios and retweets.
Film culture, at its best, thrives on disagreement. Debate sharpens analysis, challenges perspectives and deepens appreciation. But as online communities grow more militant, that space for dialogue is collapsing and being replaced by an environment where allegiance matters more than argument, and where criticism, once a tool for engagement, becomes a provocation demanding retaliation.
Even critics are feeling the pressure. Former veteran film critic A.O. Scott, in his final column for The New York Times, cited the rise of aggressive fan culture as a factor in his decision to step down. He lamented that fan culture is “rooted in conformity, obedience, group identity and mob behavior,” and that its rise mirrors “intolerant, authoritarian, aggressive tendencies in our politics and our communal life.” This underscores the extent to which these movements have begun to influence not just audiences, but the very critics tasked with guiding them.
The Oscar race will soon come to an end, but what we’ve learned is that fan power is no longer just a footnote in the cultural conversation; it’s the headline. What we’ve witnessed this season is not just a battle for a golden statue but a vision of the future of fan-driven discourse, where adoration and rivalry will increasingly intermingle with alarming intensity. In this age, where fandom is less about appreciation and more about territorial warfare, the rules of engagement are being rewritten. And as the digital dust finally settles on this turbulent season, one lesson remains as undeniable as ever: don’t fuck with the Brazilians.
Wellington Almeida is a programmer, a film writer and a devoted cat lover.