No matter that it’s set in ’70s Brazil, The Secret Agent is a spy thriller for this highly charged moment in history—a saga of persecution, paranoia, and terror whose portrait of life under autocracy boasts more than a few distressing echoes with our present American (and global) reality.
The story of a man on the run from corrupt and murderous forces determined to punish him for his insolence, it’s a firecracker genre film that hums with suspense, even as it colors its action with humor, horror, and surrealistic fantasy, all of it designed to capture the unreal madness of a society figuratively (and sometimes literally) strangled by dictatorship.
For acclaimed director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius), The Secret Agent is a triumphant follow-up to his stellar 2019 genre-bender Bacurau, mixing and matching tones and devices to convey a potent sense of the era’s fraught socio-political dynamics.
It’s also a stellar showcase for his lead Wagner Moura, who after years of working outside his native Brazil (including in the U.S., with projects like Civil War, Dope Fiend, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith), delivers a powerhouse performance that earned him Best Actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and seems destined for Academy Award attention.
Together, the duo bring live-wire inventiveness, tension, and heart to their stellar drama about Marcelo (Moura), a university researcher and widower who returns to Recife to reunite with his young son (Enzo Nunes), acquire documents regarding his deceased mother, and, ultimately, evade a pair of assassins hired by a vengeful businessman (Luciano Chirolli).
Doing that proves a perilous proposition, and over the course of his odyssey, Marcel must change his identity, reside in secret amongst fellow refugees, collaborate with his movie-projectionist father-in-law, and walk a tightrope with the local sheriff, whose depravity is emblematic of the country’s authoritarian ugliness.
A perfect marriage of filmmaker and star, The Secret Agent is a vivid, multifaceted nightmare of despotism and desperation, and one of the year’s unqualified standouts. Ahead of its Nov. 26 theatrical premiere, we spoke with Filho and Moura about the roots of their partnership, creating art in tyrannical times, and celebrating Brazil’s diversity on screen.
Your relationship dates back to a meeting at Cannes 20 years ago. When did you begin thinking about collaborating?
WM: From my perspective, it was like, from the get-go. But actually, when I met him, I didn’t know he was a filmmaker. I thought he was a critic. I just liked him. I think one of the reasons we hit it off was the fact that we’re both from the northeast of the country. Back then, it wasn’t very common to have either films from the northeast or journalists from the northeast, and certainly not that many who were covering international film festivals. So for me to see Kleber there, it was like, cool, here’s this guy from Recife.
Then I started to see his films, and what really made me want to work with him was when I saw Neighboring Sounds, his first feature film, which I thought was one of the greatest Brazilian films ever. I became obsessed with him. We were then crossing paths at film festivals, and every time I saw him, I was like, dude, let’s do something. And he was very open.
Did politics factor into wanting to work together?
WM: I think what brought Kleber and I together in this film was politics, because we were very vocal against [Jair] Bolsonaro’s government from 2018 to 2022. I think the film reflects that. It’s a film about someone who’s trying to stick with his values when everything around him is saying the opposite of what he believes.
Both Kleber and I suffered the consequences of being vocal. I had my film Marighella censored by Bolsonaro in Brazil. Kleber also suffered lots of consequences. I think the subject of this film is memory and also, among other things, how to be faithful to who you are and keep doing what you think is fair and keep saying what you think is right when what’s around you is not in the same tune.
What was it, Kleber, that drew you to Wagner, especially for this film?
KMF: Last week, I was at the Governors Awards, and you see so many actors and actresses, and I guess as a filmmaker, you have a mental list of people that you would love to work with. For many years, Wagner was that actor I wanted to work with. Then I realized that I just had to sit down and write a script for him, and us.
As Wagner mentioned, you both ran into trouble with Bolsonaro’s censorship efforts. With the president gone, were things easier with The Secret Agent?
KMF: Getting this film funded in the beginning of the project was impossible in Brazil because the funding system was sabotaged by the Bolsonaro government, beginning with the extinction of the Ministry of Culture on Day One of his administration on January 1. The funding system came back with the Lula government, who brought back the Ministry of Culture on Day One, January 1.
The thing about public funding is it’s in our Constitution—it’s part of how we work with culture in Brazil, whether theater, cinema, music, or literature—and if a government with fascist tendencies comes to power, it’s quite easy to use the funding system against artists. I think that’s what many of us felt during the [Michel] Temer years and also when Bolsonaro came into power.
Was it creatively rewarding, Wagner, to return to Brazil—and to act in Portuguese—after years of working overseas?
WM: It’s definitely liberating. I didn’t learn English when I was a kid. My kids speak English as if they were native speakers, but for me with either English or Spanish—which is another language I can speak—I don’t care about accents. I don’t care about my accent at all; that’s not the point. The point is how to feel the words with memory. Because when I say something in Portuguese, the words come filled with memory of how many times I’ve said them when I was a kid. In English, I rationally understand the words, but it’s different.
That’s totally understandable.
WM: It was liberating, and I couldn’t believe that I’ve spent 12 years away. I mean, I can, because there was the Bolsonaro government, but it was not only that; it was also experiencing, experimenting, and doing films here [in the U.S.], which has been great for me. I also made a film that I didn’t act in, but I directed it in Brazil. It took me two-and-a-half years. And then I did Narcos, which was also something that took a long time. But even living in L.A. for seven years, I’ve always been very connected to Brazilian politics and culture, so this one was the perfect homecoming for me. Also, this is about this dude coming back home, you know what I mean? We start with this guy in this car arriving in his hometown. It just felt perfect.
Like I said, I’ve been chasing Kleber to work with for a while, and Recife is a very important city in my life as well. Many very important things in my life happened in that city. So, it’s just perfect. There are films you make and everything is great and you’re happy, and the film doesn’t end up being that good. And the opposite as well, where the process of the film is chaotic and bad and the film is kind of great. In my experience, the films don’t reflect the process. But this one, I’m happy to say, was happiness from the beginning until now. And the attention it’s getting is just f---ing great.
The film isn’t just set in the ’70s—it feels as if it’s channeling that era’s filmmaking. Were there any films you particularly thought (or talked) about when making The Secret Agent?
KMF: References have no boundaries. I will never draw a line, because that’s not how our brain works. I really believe I make films because of everything that I have seen throughout my life, and all the books I have read, and all the people I have met. I don’t want to sound too romantic, but that’s how it works.
I might think of a scene from a film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, a great Brazilian filmmaker, but I might also think of Robert Altman. I might think of a late-night television ad that used to air in Recife when I was a kid that had a catchy jingle. All of that together is what explains it. Cinephiles and film critics are very knowledgeable about cinema, but it’s really hard to explain to anyone—even to my wife and producer—how these ideas come together.
Was that true when it came to Wagner as well?
KMF: When I work with Wagner, of course I think of everything he has done before, analyzing his work in the theater, which I have seen, and on television and in the cinema. I’m writing this role and I’m thinking, I want to try something that I haven’t quite seen him do yet. All of these references, they are always in the back of my mind—or in the forefront, actually.
The Secret Agent is full of great faces, and many of them, like Tânia Maria, are locals and not professional actors.
WM: It’s one of the greatest things, in my opinion, about the film, and it starts with the script. The way Kleber writes the characters, he really takes care of every single one of them. Every single character that you see on the page, you go, oh, this is a good character—I would play this character! The characters are very humanized.
I didn’t participate in the casting process, but I find it fascinating because Brazil is indeed a country of miscegenation, and it’s beautiful to see all kinds of colors and body shapes and all these actors from the northeast. This is very important to us.
It’s a discussion in the film, the internal xenophobia that Brazil has with the southeast and northeast, so it’s great to see all these great actors. And these are not famous faces from television. The star system in Brazil is based on telenovelas, and it’s nice to see that we have famous actors like Gabriel Leone, who plays Bobbi, mixed with the guy at the gas station, who was a stage actor from Paraíba.
I just loved it. I like to say that I felt like I was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz [laughs]. Just meeting great characters in my path to wherever I was going, and whatever was going to happen to me later.
KMF: I’m just happy that the way I see Brazil is very honestly photographed on the screen. Brazil is full of all types of great faces. From Afro-Brazilians and Caucasians to indigenous and this mix of the obese, the thin, the physically handicapped. I just love the diversity, but not “diversity” in terms of how the industry uses the term. A real sense of diversity as the human element in the film.
