Waldemar Dalenogare Neto

Waldemar Dalenogare Neto is a Brazilian film critic, historian, researcher, and university professor, known internationally as the first South American member of the Critics Choice Association, the organization that votes on the Critics' Choice Movie Awards.¹ Born in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, he has lived outside Brazil for years while working between Brazil and the United States as a critic, scholar, and content creator.^{1 • 2}

Education and academic work

Dalenogare trained as a historian at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, completing a bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree in History there before a postdoctoral program in History and Cinema at Boston University in the United States.^{3 • 4} His research focuses on the relationship between politics and cinema, including work on political cinema and dictatorships.^{7 • 3}

His published scholarship includes articles on Jean-Pierre Melville's resistance cinema in Artcultura (2019), the Camelot myth in Pablo Larraín's film Jackie in Ars Historica (2017), and Chilean redemocratization in Revista Latino-Americana de História (2017), alongside earlier work on United States presidential elections.⁸ He has also written six published books, four on cinema and two on politics.⁶

Critics Choice Association

Dalenogare joined the Critics Choice Association on 27 October 2020, becoming the first South American member and therefore a voter in the Critics Choice Awards, an event widely followed as an indicator of Academy Award outcomes.^{2 • 9} The path was unusual. The association had previously accepted only members producing content in English or Spanish, and its voting calendar closes early, requiring presence in the United States limited-release circuit.² During 2019 he expanded his access to closed press screenings for United States critics, and a fellow critic encouraged him to apply.⁶ Because he produces content in Portuguese, the association's executive committee hired a translator to evaluate his work before admitting him.²

His international coverage includes two on-site Oscar coverages in the United States, in 2014 and 2015, and in-person coverage of festivals and awards worldwide, including Cannes.^{4 • 1} In 2021 he was credited with discovering the first written mention of the name Oscar in connection with the Academy Awards, displacing a decades-old theory about the statuette's nickname.⁹

Criticism and online presence

Dalenogare began publishing written film criticism in 2011 on blogs, later consolidating the material on his personal website, Dalenogare.com, where he has written about movies since 2013 and covers international film festivals.^{6 • 5} He launched the YouTube channel Dalenogare Críticas in 2019, initially as a hobby without monetization, posting daily reviews of new and classic releases on a 1 to 10 grading scale.^{1 • 10} The channel grew past 280,000 subscribers by January 2025, and he also reported 55,000 Instagram followers in December 2024.^{1 • 4}

He has been a public commentator on the state of film criticism and of Brazilian awards strategy. At a 2025 event of the Rio Grande do Sul film critics association (Accirs) in Porto Alegre, he argued that written criticism is undergoing a transformation under editorial pressure to publish quickly and to steer opinion toward engagement, citing the awards-season coverage around I'm Still Here and Emilia Pérez.¹ He has also criticized the Brazilian selection process for the international film category at the Oscars as unprofessional and prone to conflicts of interest, calling for a transparent, professionally constituted selection committee, and has noted the concentration of Brazilian film-industry recognition on the Rio–São Paulo axis at the expense of the south, northeast, and north of the country.^{6 • 1}

References

1. Accirs promove encontro com o crítico de cinema Waldemar Dalenogare, CineNewsPoa (15 January 2025)
2. Dalenogare se torna o primeiro sul-americano membro da Critics Choice, Feededigno (2 November 2020)
3. About, Movie Reviews by Dalenogare
4. ACCIRS promove encontro sobre crítica cinematográfica com Waldemar Dalenogare (18 December 2024)
5. Waldemar Dalenogare Neto, Online Film Critics Society member profile
6. Entrevistamos Waldemar Dalenogare Neto, único brasileiro votante do Critics Choice Awards, Engenharia do Cinema (1 March 2021)
7. Waldemar Dalenogare Neto, "Escuridão, resistência e silêncio em Le silence de la mer", Significação, v. 46, n. 52 (2019)
8. Waldemar Dalenogare Neto, Dialnet author page
9. Uma conversa com o historiador e crítico cinematográfico Waldemar Dalenogare, Portal TV PUC (13 August 2021)
10. Dalenogare Críticas (TV Series 2019– ), IMDb

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026

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