WAGNER MOURA IN THE SECRET AGENT KLEBER MENDONÇA FILHO: THE SECRET AGENT/O AGENTE SEGRETO (2025)TRAILER"Brazil in 1977, a period of great mischief"This year we have another great film about life under Brazil's 1970's dictatorship, very different from Walter Salles'
I'm Still Here, which won the 2025 Oscars for Best International Feature Film, Best Picture, and Best Actress. Kleber Mendonça Filho casts a wider net, with comedy, rich social detail, and Hitchcockian suspense. For some this may be too complicated. For many though, it's a delight. This one is about a researcher on the run from the south to his native Recife because he has offended an evil government-friendly businessman who chooses to shut down his academic research. Sound familiar? It did to me.
We meet Marcelo Alves (Walter Moura) on the run - but why isn't unveiled till later and instead the focus, as he stops his bright yellow VW Bug at a gas station, is on the corruption of the cops and the indifference to murder.
Marcelo'S escape is aided by a resistance group that sends him to a boarding house of "refugees" run by a feisty little old lady called Dona Sebastiana (a terrific Tania Maria. Paret of the time we are following the hit men, who wind up hiring a lower level guy o do the actual hit. Bargaining at each level takes place.
Mendonça Filho is from Recife and his last film was a documentary ode to the town's lost grand movie houses of his youth. This is woven through here too in ingenious ways, again and again. The hit men go to a movie projected by Marcelo's father-in-law. He is a widower. He is here also to see his five-year-old son, being raised by his in-laws, who wants to see
Jaws, Marcelo's father-in-law deems too scary for him and he's drawn the ads, which give him nightmares, but those vanish when he finally in fact does see the film. Marcelo's grown up son, in a sequel, played by Walter Moura again, nruns a blood bank housed in what once was the movie house where he saw
Jaws as a boy. Another movie the father-in-law's cinema is showing is Jean-Paul Belmondo in Le Magnifique, whom the trailer calls "The Secret Agent," so that's where the title comes from.
When Marcelo goes to the police station to seek help toward the end of the film, the camera slips by a large collection of face photos of "Swindlers and Con Artists," and right above it is the portrait of the dictator, Ernesto Geisel. The film is packed with little details like this.
Mendonça Filo procedes by indirection. We don't find out what happens to Marcelo till the epilogue, but the Hitchcockian part leads to violence involving the hit men. There qre also interesting needle drops featuring actual needles dropping and vinyl records. I almost forgot to mention that it's Carnival time in Recife, and there is a headcount of dead in the fair that rises to 91. THe director plays with other things, including land lines and pay phones, which are constantly talking to each other.
The Secret Agent could have been trimmer and played less with these subsidiary themes, but then it would not have been Mendonça Filho's film. It was good enough this way for them to love it at Cannes, so they no only gave Walter Moura the Best Actor award, but gave Best Director to Mendonça Filho, the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Film in Competition, and the AFCAE Art House Cinema Award. This is the kind of film they love at festivals and if you love to analyze films you'll have a ball analyzing this. Kleber Mendonça Filho is now (November 2025)ma top Oscar contender: this film has been selected by Brazil as its official entry for the 2026 Best International Feature Film Oscar. The film, which, let's remember, won Best Director and other awards at Cannes, is also considered a contender for awards in other categories.
The Secret Agent/O Agente Secreto, 158 mins., debuted in competition at Cannes winning Best Director, Best Actor and other awards there, showing in many other international festivals, including New York, for which it is reviewed here.
Metacritic rating: 87%, but as the Oscar Expert bro pointed out, only a 3̶.8̶ 3.9 on Letterboxd. (This was originally part of my NYFF and MVFF coverage.)
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