I say this all the time, but one of these days, I’ll have to sit down and figure out how many languages I’ve seen movies in. There are the basics, of course—English, obviously. German, Japanese, Italian, and French are the other big four movie languages for Westerners, with Korean, Spanish, various Indian languages, and various Chinese languages not far behind. Then you get into the “point of pride” languages, or possibly the snobbery ones, and we’re really in the weeds—I’ve seen movies in Esperanto, Mongolian, and Bambara. Between those, where you don’t have to be a Total Film Snob but where fewer Americans have seen them, is Portuguese. I realized today, however, that I’m not sure any of the movies I’ve seen in Portuguese have been from Portugal but instead are all from the deep well that is Brazilian cinema—where Fernanda Montenegro is the Grand Old Lady.

Old—well. She’s 90 now and is one of the people who’s been sitting on the schedule with me hoping intensely that they live long enough to stay eligible. And not the oldest, either, but not the youngest, come to that. I’ve been familiar with her work for some years now, frankly because her most famous movie in the US starts with “C.” But it is also almost the only movie of hers I’ve seen, because Brazilian movies do not tend to get wide distribution in the US.

Of course, she’s amazing in that movie. For those of you who haven’t seen it, well, first, you should see it. But it’s the story of a surly retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by writing and reading letters for illiterate people in a bus station in Rio. Shortly after using her services to attempt to reconnect with the father of her son, a woman is killed. Montenegro as Dora decides to help the boy reach his father. Since she starts out as so uncaring that she does not reliably mail the letters she is paid to write, this is obviously a journey for her as well.

It was for this role that she became the only Brazilian ever nominated for an Academy Award for acting. I’ll be honest with you—it’s a packed enough year that I’d only have been truly upset if the Token Meryl Streep Nomination had resulted in a win; I literally don’t remember that One True Thing was a movie until I look at the year’s nominees. I suspect even a lot of her admirers feel the same way. But I know a lot of people are mad at Gwyneth Paltrow’s win to begin with, and having Montenegro win would have been considerably better as far as at least some of them are concerned. I’m okay with her win because I don’t think comedies get enough attention from the Academy, but Montenegro is certainly worthy of the win on a different level.

In fact, her nomination in 1998 was the first time a woman from Latin America was nominated for Best Actress. No Latina has yet won Best Actress, and the only way you get two Latina winners for Best Supporting is if you count Lupita Nyong’o, born in Mexico to Kenyan parents and raised in Kenya from the age of one. (The other is the indisputably Puerto Rican Rita Moreno.) I’m one of those people who’s actually okay with the fact that most movies that win Oscars are American, because the Academy is for American movies, but it’s not as though there aren’t plenty of Latina actresses making American movies. Though Montenegro isn’t one of them; she has done Brazilian film, theatre, and television, but the only American movie she’s ever done is Love in the Time of Cholera. Which is probably why most Americans remain unfamiliar with her.

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