‘The Secret Agent’, which could take Brazil to the Oscars, portrays the tensions of Brazil in the 1970s

Right at the beginning of The Secret Agentfilms by Kleber Mendonça Filho which hits cinemas this Thursday, 6th, Marcelo, the protagonist played by Wagner Mourastops at a gas station in his yellow Beetle. A little further on, there is a body – which has been there for days, as the employee explains. There is a hint of absurdity in the situation, which moves between humor and tension – which escalates with the arrival of two police officers at the scene.

The reconstruction of the capital of Pernambuco, the director’s hometown, is done carefully, from the art direction to the costumes. But the greatest asset lies in its atmosphere of suspense, in which the threats of authoritarianism are present without the film needing to explicitly mention the military dictatorship that prevailed in the country between 1964 and 1985. “The fact that it is not mentioned by name matters little, because the climate of Brazil at the time, if it were well rendered, would be strong”, explains the director.

The film is successful in this aspect, and anchors its climate not only in Marcelo, but also in other characters who, although they have less screen time, are not unscathed by the issues of the moment in which they live. “I think it’s important to show how this happened in the lives of ordinary people; a teacher, a dentist, a housewife”, says the actress Alice Carvalho. “This allows us to understand a more complex context about this period that we often don’t want to talk about.”

Memory and partnership

The Secret Agent is, in many layers, a film about memory – what is remembered, what is erased, and who tells the story next. Behind the scenes, memory was also a driving force behind the film, as Kleber Mendonça Filho lent a lot of his own memories to the plot.

“I remember this historical moment, when I was a child; I am the son of a historian, I have a memory like an elephant, so there is a lot that went into the making of the film”, says the filmmaker, who turns 57 on the 22nd.

Mendonça Filho spent around two years writing the script for The Secret Agentafter the great success of Bacurau (2019), in a process that he defines as complex. “With a lot of work, I arrived at a version that I felt confident enough to show to Wagner, because I really wanted to make the film with him.”

Their relationship is long-standing: they met twenty years ago, during the Cannes Film Festival. The actor was at the event alongside Alice Braga and Lázaro Ramos to promote the film Lower Cityby Sérgio Machado, and the filmmaker was there as a film critic. “Reporters from the Northeast who went to cover Cannes were rare; I was there with a film from Bahia, I met that guy from Recife, and it was a really good deal”, said the actor during the press conference, before the conversation with the reporter.

Coincidentally, it would be precisely in the most recent edition of the French festival, in May of this year, that both would be recognized, with the awards for Best Actor and Best Director. The double award, in fact, was an exception to the rules of the event, which usually distributes each of its main awards to a different film.

The partnership also marks Moura’s return to acting in a film spoken in Portuguese, after more than a decade of working abroad – in the series Narcos (2015) that catapulted him to global fame, dystopian blockbuster Civil war (2024), de Alex Garland.

“When I act in Portuguese, the words have memory; when I say ‘father’, ‘mother’ in Portuguese, I’ve already said that word millions of times to my father, to my mother. If I say ‘mother’, ‘mom’, it doesn’t come loaded with that”, reflects Moura, when Estadão. “It’s not important to speak English or Spanish with an accent. The issue is memory.”

It is appropriate, then, that this return takes place precisely in a film that has memory so ingrained within it. And even more so that this film takes place precisely in Recife, the city where Moura acted for the first time The Machinea play by João Falcão who was responsible, in 2000, for revealing it to the public, alongside the then also newcomers Vladimir Brichta and Lázaro Ramos. The combination of all these factors, he says, “was incredible”.

There is also a chance of nominations in other categories. Compared to I’m Still HereMendonça Filho’s film arrives in the awards season in a better position, which could boost it in ceremonies leading up to the Oscars, such as the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards. They don’t have the same voting body as the Academy Awards, but they are important showcases; Fernanda Torres’ victory at the Golden Globes at the beginning of the year gave much welcome visibility to Walter Salles’ film, and certainly helped in winning Brazil’s first Oscar.

This month, Moura will join Mendonça Filho at campaign events, which usually involve travel, meetings with the press and special screenings for voters. “It’s cool, but tiring,” says the actor, who received advice from Fernanda during a recent lunch: “Eat well, sleep and try not to get sick.”