How Oscar-nominated film The Secret Agent was born out of resistance to the far right

Some very fine films are up for best picture at this year's upcoming Academy Awards, with Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler's Sinners the two currently looking most likely to emerge as winner of the category. But The Secret Agent – which will become the last of the nominees to arrive in UK cinemas when it is released tomorrow (Friday 20th February) – might just be the pick of the bunch.

The new film from writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho is the second Brazilian film in two years to make the best picture line-up after Walter Selles's drama I'm Still Here achieved the same feat last year. Like that film, it explores a tumultuous period in the country's history – the military dictatorship that existed between 1964 and 1985 – although unlike it, it tells a fictional story inspired by the atmosphere of the time rather than a true story.

Narcos and Civil War star Wagner Moura, who has himself been nominated for best actor at the Oscars, takes on the lead role in the film. And although he was only one-year old at the time of it's 1977 setting, he didn't need too much preparation when it came to learning about the period in question.

"I have very vivid memories of what the dictatorship was," he explained in conversation with Radio Times. "And I also directed a film in 2018 [political thriller Marighella] that took place during the dictatorship. So I had studied a lot, read a lot about what Brazil was – socially, economically, culturally, politically – back in those times.

"But most of all I think that the logic of the dictatorship is still very present in Brazil. It's not like the dictatorship ended in 1985 and that was it. The echoes of the dictatorship are still very present. From 2018 to 2022 we had a far right president, [Jair] Bolsonaro – who by the way is in jail right now for attempting against democracy in Brazil.

"This man is a physical manifestation of these echoes of the dictatorship in the country. So to be honest, it wasn't a big effort to understand the logic of those times."

In fact, it was resistance to the Bolsanoro regime that had led Moura and Mendonça Filho to collaborate on this film.

The pair have known each other for 20 years, having first met at the Cannes Film Festival when Mendonça Filho interviewed Moura in his old job as a film journalist. Although Moura laughs that the director "was a very mean critic" who wrote "very, very heavy reviews", the two became friends, and as soon as the actor saw Mendonça Filho's debut film Neighboring Sounds in 2012 he knew that he wanted to work with him one day.

"I thought it was one of the greatest Brazilian films I had ever seen, and I expressed my desire to work with him," he said. "And it was mutual. He invited me to be in his film Bacarau but I couldn't do it because I was directing my own film back then."

For The Secret Agent, though, the stars aligned.

"What really brought us together in this project was politics," he explained. "What it was to be in Brazil under a wannabe dictator, what it was when Brazil took this sharp turn to the right with the President that openly praised the dictatorship, praised the torturers, the killers, and people that worked for the dictatorship.

"And Kleber and I, we see the role of an artist in a very similar way. We are very different from one another, but we see our role as artists in a very similar way. And we were both very vocal against that particular government, and we both suffered the consequences of that. I had my film censored in Brazil. Kleber had problems too.

"So I think that what put us together, actually, to do The Secret Agent, was our shared perplexity over what was going on in the country, during that time.”

Of course, the Bolsanaro era might now be at an end – since 2023 the Brazilian government has been led by the left-wing politician Lula – but one of the main themes of The Secret Agent is the importance of addressing history, of exploring the collective trauma suffered by the country's people during dark times. And according to Moura, this speaks to one of the great powers of film in general.

“When I was a boy, because I grew up during the dictatorship, the history that I was taught when I was a kid was completely wrong," he explained.

"It's a film about the importance of collective memory, or how an entire generation can be traumatised and how that impacts the soul of the country. So, I think that films are important in that sense. I don't believe that we have to make films for that, but it's good they end up having this function."

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Secret Agent relates to how much information is revealed and when. The film adopts a framing device that sees a history student in the modern day learning about the era and the activities of Moura's character – who at various points in the story goes by both 'Armando' and 'Marcelo'.

Because the information she has at her disposal is incomplete, so is our picture of the character, something which communicates the fact that many records of dissidents at the time are now tragically lost. But although the audience are told a fragmented story, Moura was keen to fill in the gaps of his character's backstory as much as he could for his own benefit as an actor.

"I think that's usually what actors do," he said. "But I really like how Kleber doesn't spoon-feed the audience with answers. It makes the audience part of the game.

"Until, like, an hour-and-a-half into the film, you don't really know what's going on, it's like putting the pieces of the puzzle together and understanding parts of what that character is. And I really like that. I really like that he doesn't provide answers."

He continued: "There are things that I think happened in a [certain] way, and Kleber might think that it happened in another way, and you might think that it's different for yourself. So I like that a lot. But for sure, as an actor, I had my own answers that don't necessarily match Kleber's answers or your takes on that."

One thing that the film does do is provide some interesting context for the film's setting – the northeastern city of Recife. The action regularly diverts from the main plot line to provide all sorts of tangents focusing on the local community and the people Armando comes into contact with, at one point even indulging in a fantasy sequence exploring a local legend known as the hairy leg.

This ties in with Mendonça Filho's previous film – the 2023 documentary Pictures of Ghosts – which explored the various 20th century cinemas of Recife, many of which are no longer operating.

"The Secret Agent wouldn't exist if he hadn't directed that film," Moura said. "Which is his interest in Recife, in the archeology of the centre of Recife. The old movie theater, São Luiz, is kind of a character in this film as well as the city and the legends like the hairy leg.

"All these things make the cultural aspects of the Northeast of Brazil, of Recife... I think they are very important part of of what The Secret Agent is. And I love it."

Towards the end of our conversation we come back round to the subject of Brazilian cinema more generally, and specifically the recent boost it's received when it comes to international recognition at major awards ceremonies.

Of course, Brazilian cinema has a deep, rich history – Moura mentions everything from Walter Selles's 1995 action film Foreign Land to Eduardo Coutinho's 1984 documentary Twenty Years Later to Glauber Rocha's revisionist western Black God, White Devil – but this latest uptick, he explained, is not a coincidence.

"It's a good moment for Brazilian cinema, for sure," he said. "Since we got rid of the fascist government that is in jail right now, we now have – again – a president and a government that likes culture. Because our production is still very dependent on government funds – so it's not by chance that we are living in a good moment."

The Secret Agent is released in UK cinemas on Friday 20th February 2026.

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