Synopsis
A slow-burning, tense political drama from Brazil filmed to recreate the atmosphere of a 1970s Hollywood thriller. The majority of the film is set in 1977, in the same time period as I’m Still Here, but with a very different flavour; giving a broader sense of the turmoil inflicted on the country. Director, Kleber Mendonça Filho has crafted a richly layered drama; a provocative and vivid exposé of corruption and persecution with startling images, random violence, quirky characters, digressions into odd folk tales and an odd cameo from Udo Kier.
Wagner Moura (Narcos’ Pablo Escobar), in a soulful, understated performance, plays Armando - using the name Marcelo as an alias - a widower and former research scientist on the run from events in his past. Travelling to his hometown of Recife to reunite with his young son and obtain documents that will allow them to leave the country, he arrives at a refuge for political dissidents run by former anarchist/communist Dona Sebastiana (a scene-stealing septuagenarian seamstress-turned-actress, Tânia Maria). To get assistance and a fake passport, she puts him in touch with Elza, the leader of a resistance group. When Armando meets her at a cinema, which also acts as a contact point for dissidents, he discovers he is the target of a contract killing. Some way into the film, we see modern-day researcher, Flavia, digitising archived cassette tapes. Her discoveries uncover Armando’s place within Recife’s intricate web of secrets, revealing the sinister state corruption and violence which surrounded it.
Winner of Best Director and Best Actor at Cannes 2025 with four Academy Award nominations, two BAFTA nominations, and two Golden Globe wins, The Secret Agent stands as a defining achievement in the rebirth of Brazilian cinema and a testament to the fate of all the ordinary Brazilian people whose lives are just forgotten cases buried in an archive.
NB. The legend of the ‘hairy leg’ became a cultural symbol and metaphor for the invisible terror people lived under at the time.
Language: Portuguese, German, with subtitles
Additional Info
Why Watch?
“Without missing a beat, it can depart from painstaking period piece into B-movie territory, satirising media-fabricated panic in a vignette about a sentient severed leg that goes on a killing rampage in a gay cruising area. Such confident skill, combined with the richness of the narrative and the impressively fluid storytelling, renders the film riveting for all 158 minutes of its running time. One is tempted to call it a masterpiece.” (Sight and Sound)
“ .. 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.” (The Guardian)
Director’s Comments - Kleber Mendonça Filho
Inside “The Secret Agent”: Kleber Mendonça Filho & Wagner Moura on Power, Paranoia, and an Oscar‑Nominated Thriller by Loren King, Motion Picture Association, March 12, 2026,
Mendonça Filho: “I didn’t really want to make a film about the dictatorship, I wanted to rebuild the sense of the time. In very difficult situations when people get together and they protect each other.”
“I believe cinema puts a time stamp on our lives, like music does. In a period piece, I use these cultural time stamps. Hollywood had a strong reverberation around the world. Brazilian time stamps were telenovelas, musicals of that era. In the ‘70s, Jaws was a phenomenon in Brazil. Recife is a coastal city with a real shark problem, so combining the two is fascinating.”
Location
Cheltenham Film Society, Bacon Theatre, Hatherley Rd, Cheltenham, GL51 6EP
