The Secret Agent

Winner! Best Director and Best Actor, Cannes Film Festival

Brazil’s official Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film

Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Bacurau) returns with a thrillingly unpredictable, empowering political fable about people swept up in forces beyond their control. A dynamic, shape-shifting epic set in the filmmaker’s hometown of Redife during the late 1970s, The Secret Agent stars the magnetic Wagner Moura as widowed former university professor whose life has been violently upended by the greed and vengeance of a government bureaucrat. On the run and living under an alias during the country’s military dictatorship, he tries to escape, while also reconnecting with the young son he had to leave behind. Even a brief description cannot fully prepare viewers for the zigzagging subplots and delights of Mendonça’s eccentric and affectionate ode to the movies and the Brazil of his youth – and to maintaining individuality amid abuses of power. (Dir. by Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025, Brazil, in Portuguese/German/English with English subtitles, 160 mins., Rated R)