“FEELS LIKE AN ITCH YOU CAN’T SCRATCH”-
Despite being listed as a neo-noire historical political thriller, The Secret Agent feels a lot like a road movie. Widower Armando Solimões’ (Wagner Moura) life as a researcher on Lithium batteries at the University is thrown into disarray when Henrique Ghirotti (Luciano Chirolli) a corrupt businessman, uses his influence to stop his research funding and threatens him because of his own vested interests in the sector.
Set in chapters, Armando flees to Recife, his home town, hoping to pick up his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes) and leave the country. There, he is, ironically, befriended by an equally corrupt Chief of Police, Euclides Oliveira Cavalcanti (superbly played by Robério Diógenes) who, (with his two side- kick sons and partners in crime), takes a shine to him. Discovering he’s being hunted by two hit men, Armando seeks Chief Euclides’ protection which only partially solves the problem. Meanwhile, by an underground resistance group who are dedicated to helping dissidents of the Military Dictatorship, Armando is persuaded to obtain false passports for himself and his son If he has any hopes of managing to leave the country.
This delightfully multilayered and imaginative film plays with time and memory. A profound love of place (in the case Recife) shines through, with all its accompanying eccentricities and idiosyncrasies with a multitude of background themes: including a tiger shark that is found to contain a ‘hairy human leg’, an unexpected discovery that particularly disturbs the Chief of Police.
This ‘hairy leg’ then takes on a life of its own, making it almost impossible to dispose of, causing a whole myth to rise around it. When it’s claimed to be attacking people in the local park gay rendezvous area, it’s accused of creating homophobic undertones in the town. (This wonderful true story, printed in the actual local newspaper at the time, created a media frenzy in Recife.) Acting satirically, this hairy leg refers to being kicked and ill-treated by actual regime supporters themselves, including the local police.
Gabriel Leone as Bobbi and Roney Villela as Augusto disposing of body parts
At the same time, Fernando, Armando’s son, is tormented by nightmares of sharks sparked by the posters of the new blockbuster ‘Jaws’ (1975) that is about to be played at the authentic and [still] existing local São Luiz Cinema, where Fernando’s grandfather Alexandre (a superb Carlos Francisco) is the projectionist.
Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana and Wagner Moura as Armando/ Marcelo
The film is built up of a rich collage of scenes, images and stories that float about the communities in the area around Armando, with amazing people like Dona Sebastiana (a fantastic Tânia Maria) who takes Armando into her small condominium of other refugees despite the risks it entails. Mendonça Filho has the ability to use digressions and transgressions here and there, to fill out the characters, adding a surrealistic feel together with a wonderful undercurrent of dark humour. Objects are given a symbolic significance that is carried across time, as Kleber Mendonça Filho says: -
“Well, I think I love these elements because, first of all they are interesting to me and hopefully they will be interesting for parts and elements of the story. I grew up reading books and watching films and that is how it goes. You look to do the right thing - it’s very specific to a place, as in BROOKLYN which is a film I saw in 1990 and it became a major reference for me in terms of making a film. In fact, it led me to writing my first film ‘Neighbouring Sounds’ (2012) which also takes place in a city block, and that’s how it works. You begin to play with references that you saw before.
When you come from a city which has so much character like Recife, and I grew up with (laughs) so many crazy elements and stories, [things like] Carnival, and the music, so it's only natural that I should use Recife as a character. It has [often] become a character of sort in my films.
I was recently in Los Angeles and I gave a speech when I was given the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for ‘Best International Film’. So, [in the same way] I could [also] talk about Los Angeles, or even about London in cinema. So, I think where you come from is probably a very interesting place and that comes out naturally in the films that I write.”
Maria Fernanda Cândido as Elza from the underground group helping Armando.
Recife, in the state of Pernambuco has also been buzzing in the last few years with an array of talented filmmakers emerging from it. Creatives like Gabriel Mascaro with ‘The Blue Trail’ (O Ultimo Azul 2025) or Guto Parente, with films like ‘Inferninho’ (A Little Private Heaven 2016) and ‘The Cannibal Club’ (2019), have been causing a stir at the festivals, so much so that Recife has become a very powerful creative hub in Brazil.
Róberio Diógenes as Chief Euclides, Wagner Moura as Armando and the Chief's two sons
High among them is Kleber Mendonça Filho. He has often talked about having been inspired by directors and filmmakers that include Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, John Boorman’s ‘Point Blank’, and Karel Kachinyña’s ‘The Ear,’ to name a few. But there is an element that belongs to Mendonça Filho on a more personal level that is very distinctly Brazilian, as he described at our interview in a London Hotel: -
“There is something tactile about objects, we all know this. Right in front [of me now] there are many shelves of old books and I can only imagine where these books come from, and now, they are being used as décor in a hotel in London! (laughs), but I like the whole idea of each object having its own life and its own history. A good example in’ The Secret Agent’ are the cassette tapes. I remember once I visited a cinema tech, a Brazilian cinema, and they were scanning an original negative. I looked at the negative and I thought wow, this is the original camera negative from this 1951 film, and there it was, being scanned in a modern German scanner. The cassette tapes for me, are the time machine in the film because the same cassette that was used to record Armando in the [São Luiz] Cinema in 1977, was now being handled by this young woman in the future…”
“…I love digressions but they can tricky. There was one digression that I had to cut out of the film. It was a great scene with Wagner but it didn’t work in the whole panorama of the film, but digressions are wonderful. I love them.”
Thomas Aquino as Valdemar
As much as what Mendonça Filho calls digressions, there are elements in this movie that echo the surrealism of someone like Luis Buñuel. A woman in a pop-up police station types away with no paper, then, after finding some paper, she decides to proposition Armando with a message.
The two hit men almost resemble a sinister comedy duo, a dead body appears on the roadside by a service station is left abandoned. No one claims or even examines it, including the police who are more interested in trying to collect bribes from the living. Or equally, the notorious theft of the by now pretty ‘high’ “hairy leg,” is not something one would normally run off with! But then, there is a purpose to every story: -
“We’ll be safe as long as they don’t find anything else apart from the leg… let’s hope the piranhas are out tonight…” as the leg is tossed back into the water.
That may or not be the case, but Armando finds himself in what he perceives to be an almost unreal world, having been unwittingly targeted and haunted by the ghosts of the past that has permeated life in the regions. He is mystified that he should need false passports to go abroad with his son, when he knows he has done no wrong. He is living a nightmare, not far off those his own son suffers from when tormented by sharks in his dreams.
Wagner Moura as Armando and Enzo Nunes as his son Fernando
The casting director (Gabriel Domingues) has to be congratulated for the actors fit their roles to perfection. In particular Wagner Moura as Armando (or Marcelo, to mention his fake name when he is on the run). This magnetic and versatile actor has played a myriad of different roles. There is a mischievous spark that shines in his every movement and there is a reason that he has developed a reputation for intelligent interpretations of his roles, (fortunately recognized with well-deserved awards including his recent Golden Globe as ‘Best Actor’ in ‘The Secret Agent’).
Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura during filming
Moura describes his role in the film as a collaboration with the director: -
“This [role] comes from a very personal encounter between Kleber and I. I think we would have ended up working together [one way or another] because I have been trying to work with him for a while. We became friends and we see politics and we see Brazil and our roles as artists in a very similar way, even though we’re very different men. So, we were going to work together at some point but I think that The Secret Agent is a film that came from a very personal moment that we both lived, which was Brazil under Bolsonaro. So, I was very aware of how that character was going to function, even before I read the script. What I look for when I read the script, or what I want to do as an actor, is exactly what Kleber offered me in this film, which is a character with complexity. One of my favourite scenes in the film is when he [Armando] is in the movie theatre and he discovers that there are hit men looking for him. Then he goes downstairs and it’s the carnival and he gives himself to that carnival. That kind of thing, you don’t see it happening that often. Usually, the characters are written in a very monolithic way, so I think it’s the hardest part of the whole process for the scriptwriter.”
There is a small cameo appearance by the late Udo Kier (1944-2025) in his last performance as Hans. He is pestered (almost tormented) by Chief Euclides who is convinced that he is a WW2 veteran and Nazi refugee, when in reality he is a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Roney Villela as Augusto and Gabriel Leone as Bobbi- the sinister hit men
Both Director and Actor align in their political sympathies and Moura who admits to having wanted to work with Mendonça Filho for some time admits they would have found a way not matter what, especially taking into account the fact that the shadow of the dictatorship still lies heavy on the country: -
“Very much so. First of all, in practical terms I think it has set us back maybe three decades, that is 30 years! It stunted the development of our country and this is not only my opinion. It’s also an open wound. Fernando, at the end of the film, finds it really hard to go into that subject. This happened to many families. The same thing happens in Spain. We showed the film in San Sebastian and we had some great conversations with film critics. The Franco era is [also] still unresolved.”
In 2016, at the screening in Cannes of ‘Aquarius’, the director and some of the crew staged a protest upsetting the powers that be in Brazil. This led to that film and the subsequent stunning “Bacurau” (directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho with Juliano Dornelles) both being boycotted from representing Brazil at the Oscars.
But as Moura insists: they are both politically motivated individuals and feel the need to speak out where necessary. He was the First South American actor to win the ‘Best Actor Award’ at Cannes and at the 83rd Golden Globes and like many other Latin artists, understands why Latino actors have often complained about their situation versus the Hollywood giants and feel the need to fight for more rights and recognition of the talent that they offer: -
“I think it is getting better, but it is still there and it also depends on us to, to refuse, to not… I do not want to simply be reinforcing stereotypes about Latin people in Hollywood, so it’s a path with two ways. I mean it’s for them also, they have to take responsibility when they write their scripts and they cast the actors, but we also have to fight for it. It is our responsibility not to [do it]- but it is hard to judge because many actors are there just trying to survive and pay their bills, but I think it’s our responsibility not to … I, myself, want to fight for that, for that representation. It’s very important, I have been saying like we have simply been receiving some awards like: The ‘First South American’ to receive this award, the ‘First South American’ to receive that award! Although I am very happy for them, I always make a point in saying: “Really? Haven’t you seen what’s been going on in Latin American Cinema for the past 50 years?” I am a political person and I would like to support these things in everything. It is how I behave as an artist.”
Wagner Moura and Kleber Mendonça Filho
Awards: The Secret Agent has swept the boards at the festivals winning at 51 awards and attracting over 95 nominations- nominations and wins for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor ( Wagner Moura), Best Supporting actress (Tânia Maria) and more.
THE SECRET AGENT 2025 will be in cinemas from 20th February 2026
Writer/ Director Kleber Mendonça Filho/Production Emilie Lesclaux, Kleber Mendonça Filho/ Exec Producers Bret Travers/ Composers: Mateus Alves and Tomaz Alves Souza/ Cinematographer: Evgenia Alexandrova / Editors: Matheus Farias and Eduardo Serrano/ Casting Director: Gabriel Domingues/ Sound Designer: Tijn Hazen/
CAST: Wagner Moura as Armando/ María Fernanda Cândido as Elza/ Róberio Diógenes as Chief Euclides/ Tânia Maria as Dona Sebastiana/ Luciano Chirolli as Henrique Ghirotti/ Udo Kier as Hans/ Thomas Aquino as Valdemar/ Gabriel Leone as Bobbi and Roney Villela as Augusto/ Igor de Araújo as Sérgio/ Buda Lira as Anisio/
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s earlier films are all being streamed on MUBI – ‘BACURAU’ (2019) is streaming now and others will be live from February 20th 2026.
For more information on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s previous films please see: -
