Kicking off this year’s series in which our writers advocate for one Academy Award nominee, our chief critic on why the Brazilian drama-thriller is the most audacious and fully realised film in the race

As ever, this year’s Oscars have their half-dozen or so favourites and frontrunners, some truly outstanding movies among them. But the one that has stayed in my mind is a knight’s move away from the talking-point consensus: an amazingly sophisticated, wayward and garrulous film from Brazil, a film about love and fatherhood, tyranny and resistance, and coming to terms with the past. It is digressive and droll and yet in its final act escalates stunningly from lugubrious mystery to cold-sweat tension and violence.

When the best picture Oscar is announced, my heart would sing to see its husband-and-wife producers Emilie Lesclaux and Kleber Mendonça Filho go on stage to accept it for their drama-thriller The Secret Agent. Directed by Mendonça Filho, it’s a movie made with effortless style and touched with pure cinematic inspiration. The opening scene alone, with its queasy black-comic unease, is itself a kind of masterpiece. It is like Antonioni’s The Passenger mixed with Leone and Peckinpah and a pulp shocker by Elmore Leonard. Yet it has a kind of novelistic, episodic quality – a cool, discursive self-awareness. You might call it a little miracle, although at near-epic length (2hrs 40mins), it’s actually a very big miracle.

Williams team principal on pre-season travails, why McLaren are an inspiration and closing the gap to the top

“I didn’t realise it until I saw the notice,” James Vowles says of January’s third anniversary of his arrival at Williams as their team principal. On a rainy afternoon he smiles wryly in his London office. “I probably should have allowed myself a moment to reflect, but you are too caught up in the work. That reality defines Formula One.”

Vowles is one of the most interesting men in F1 and not just because, as the director of strategy, he helped two teams win nine constructors’ championships and eight drivers’ titles. He will soon reveal a reflective side to his character and touch on the adversity he overcame at the outset of his career. His relish for a challenge in pure racing terms is obvious because in 2022 he left Mercedes, who had finished second in the championship, for Williams, after they ended that season in 10th and last place.

The queen of children’s edutainment is back after four very long months, with her most extraordinary, envelope-pushing and moving special yet. Cue absolute relief for parents the world over

For those whose cultural experiences are largely absorbed through the prism of their mewling infants’ demands for the same thing 437 times in a row, it’s been a long four months. In late October last year, Rachel Accurso released Brush Your Teeth Song with Ms Rachel and Elmo. The 48m views it has since racked up reflect its status as a solid addition to the Ms Rachel canon, and the whole thing is obviously enhanced by Elmo’s guest spot. But it was studded with reheated clips from previous compilations, such as The Wheels on the Bus from Blippi & Ms Rachel Learn Vehicles, and It’s Potty Time from Potty Training With Ms Rachel. There is a limit to the number of plays an adult can reasonably be expected to endure of a bear puppet in a nappy hymning his ability to relieve himself, and the Ms Rachel hive is thirsting for something new.

Enter, on Friday, Learn With Ms Rachel – Friendship & Social Skills, an hour-long compendium, in which the leviathan of contemporary children’s edutainment helps her guests “model important social skills such as kindness, taking turns, sharing, asking a friend to play and helping others”. A few minutes on any of the subreddits that pore over Ms Rachel content clarifies the weight of this cultural moment. Or you could ask my two-year-old about it.

Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be discovered

Once Art Borkent starts speaking about biting midges, he rarely pauses for breath. Holding up a picture of a gnat trapped in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, the 72-year-old taxonomist explains that there are more than 6,000 ceratopogonidae species known to science. He has described and named more than 300 midges, mostly from his favourite family of flies. Some specialise in sucking blood from mammals, reptiles, other insects and even fish, often using the CO₂ from their host’s breath to locate their target, he says. Tens of thousands remain a mystery to science, waiting to be discovered.

But to Borkent’s knowledge, nobody will continue his life’s work of identifying and studying this group of flies once he has gone.

Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon

Over the past year, more than two dozen countries around the world have proposed bans on social media use for vast swathes of their public. These laws, often proposed under the guise of “child safety”, are ushering in an era of mass surveillance and widespread censorship, contributing to what scholars have called a “global free speech recession”.

Last year, Australia became the first country to ban anyone under the age of 16 from accessing social media. The move emboldened other countries around the world to quickly follow suit. Germany’s ruling party announced it was backing a social media ban. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for a ban on social media for under-15s. In the UK, Keir Starmer has sought to enact sweeping social media bans. Greece, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Japan have also pursued similar online identity verification laws.

Taylor Lorenz is a technology journalist who writes the newsletter User Mag and is the author of the bestselling book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Famed for having a child’s drawing of a family carved into her back, the photographer has devoted her life to queer America, from endurance swimmers to drag artists to her son in a tutu. Now she’s finally getting a major UK show

There is no direct reference to Trump’s America in Catherine Opie’s To Be Seen, the US photographer’s first large museum exhibition in Britain, featuring key works going back to the 1990s. Mythic and personal, the images depict the American landscape and American family. Above all, they are concerned with the 64-year-old’s career-long interest in the representation of gay, lesbian and queer Americans missing from mainstream art history. Most of the photos were taken long before the Trump presidencies and yet, browsing the show, it feels like a powerful rebuke to the current administration – so much so that it brings on a mood of almost hysterical relief.

For 27 years, Opie taught photography at the University of California, Los Angeles, and would tell her students that it was part of the mission of the serious artist to show “an example in a public space of what it is to be brave”. So it is with To Be Seen, which features some of Opie’s most famous and bravest works, from her portraits of friends to denizens of LA’s 1990s leather dyke scene: the iconic, androgynous Pig Pen, a friend who appears in a series of shots, looking coolly at the camera, daring the viewer to define them; her Being and Having series, an early challenge to gender norms featuring 13 butch lesbians posing in stick-on, Halloween-grade facial hair, in an absurdist performance of masculinity; and Dyke, in which Opie’s friend Steakhouse – speaking of brave – poses with her back to the camera, the word “dyke” tattooed in large ornate script across the back of her neck.

Iranian strikes hit Saudi and Qatar energy sites; US crew bailed out safely before crash-landing, says Kuwait

• Podcast: The assassination of Iran’s ayatollah

• Have you been affected by events in the Middle East?

Bahrain has said that one person was killed by shrapnel from an intercepted missile. The death of a foreign worker at Salman Industrial City, working on a boat there, marks the kingdom’s first reported fatality in the war.

Bahrain, home to the US navy’s 5th fleet, said it intercepted 61 missiles and 34 attack drones launched against it. It said some shrapnel had gotten through, striking buildings and the naval base.

‘We’re knocking the crap out of them,’ president tells CNN; Pete Hegseth refuses to put timeline on conflict

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While speaking today, Pete Hegseth acknowledged the fourth US service member killed in Iran’s counterattacks.

“War is hell and always will be,” he said. “Our grateful nation honors the four Americans we have lost thus far and those injured – the absolute best of America.”

Meeting of six-country cooperation council says option to respond to attacks by Tehran remains on the table

• US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

Gulf states, encouraged by Donald Trump, are on the verge of ending their neutrality in the war against Iran in reprisal for Tehran’s repeated “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” on their territory and infrastructure.

The calls, led by the United Arab Emirates from inside the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council, are for the Arab states to act in self-defence against Iran, but it would be a huge step for Gulf leaders in effect to side with Israel in a war that will determine the future shape of the Middle East, probably to the advantage of Israel.

The prime minister is explaining his decision to allow the US to use British bases for military attacks after initially refusing

• ‘Simply not true’ UK is being dragged into Iraq-style conflict, says foreign secretary

After an unmanned drone struck the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus overnight – and two more drones heading toward the base were struck down on Monday – Greece will send two frigates and two F-16 fighter jets to Cyprus “to contribute to its defence against the threats it faces,” said Greek defence minister Nikos Dendias, who will also travel to Cyprus tomorrow.

For the latest on Europe’s response to US-Israel war on Iran, follow The Guardian’s live coverage here.