Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers one of the year’s greatest films with THE SECRET AGENT, a sly, genre-bending political thriller starring Wagner Moura in a brilliant performance as Marcelo, a technology researcher on the lam in 1977 during Brazil’s notorious military dictatorship.
The film begins with Marcelo headed to the northern city of Recife — the filmmaker’s oft-portrayed hometown — seeking asylum and to be closer to his young son. Arriving during the raucous celebrations of Carnival, Marcelo is welcomed by a colorful community of political refugees — yet an insidious atmosphere of surveillance, paranoia and danger encircles him. Mendonça Filho spotlights corruption everywhere, from the sleazy local police chief and his ruthless deputies to the director of the state identification archives where Marcelo is simultaneously working, hiding and searching for his mother’s official ID card.
Told in three parts, and toggling between multiple timelines, THE SECRET AGENT reveals its plot in a puzzle-play of intrigue and information that reflects the ways in which truth is often concealed and memory contradicted under oppressive regimes. The film functions as a précis for the authoritarian playbook. Yet, it is also a thrilling and pleasurable neo-noir steeped in Mendonça Filho’s love for and knowledge of cinema, with film references including JAWS — and his own documentary PICTURES OF GHOSTS on the history of Brazilian movie palaces. The film was shot with Panavision anamorphic lenses and vintage camera equipment, replicating the visual style of the 1970s. Winner of multiple awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and driven by a grim, hypnotic tension, THE SECRET AGENT is essential viewing.
“An imposing masterpiece steeped in history and a palpable adoration for cinema, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s THE SECRET AGENT stands as the director’s most ambitiously monumental effort in a career with no missteps thus far.” —Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist “This movie, visually and dramatically superb in every way, moves with unhurried confidence across the screen, pausing to savour every bizarre bit of comedy or erotic byway, or note of pathos, on its circuitous path to the violent finale…. Thrilling, bravura film-making.” —Peter Bradshaw, Guardian “It’s a major achievement, and for my money, sure to be one of the best films of the year.” —David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter “By delicately weaving the veracity of archive, the reverie induced by celluloid, and the inevitability of corruption into its narrative, THE SECRET AGENT becomes a career-spanning treatise that cozily situates itself amid the staggering cinematic epics that Mendonça pays respect to.” —Natalia Keogan, The A.V. Club
