Brazilian filmmaker Newton Cannito has launched an "Anti-Censorship Letter" calling on candidates in this year's general elections to formally commit to freedom of expression and support for culture. The document was drafted in partnership with the advocacy group Free Speech Union Brasil (FSU-BR), the Mônica Bergamo column in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Tuesday (25).

According to the column, the letter is addressed to candidates running for public office in the October vote and asks them to publicly commit to defending free artistic expression during the campaign.

Cannito, who served as Audiovisual Secretary at the Ministry of Culture in 2010, during Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's second term, says Brazil now lives under a "woke dictatorship" and ideological policing, Folha reports. In a July interview with the FSU-BR podcast, the filmmaker had already claimed that "censorship today is much worse than during the dictatorship", referring to what he described as a repressive climate created by identity politics in Brazilian arts. Brazil's military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, censored films, plays and songs.

Free Speech Union Brasil describes itself as an association dedicated to defending freedom of expression, fighting censorship and helping people who say they have been censored. Its projects include a "Censorship Traffic Light" that monitors laws and bills the group considers threats to free expression in Brazil.

The letter comes in the final stretch of the campaign for the first round of the general elections, scheduled for October 4. So far, only the Mônica Bergamo column has reported the initiative, and there is no public information on how many filmmakers signed the document or whether any candidate has endorsed it.