THE SECRET AGENT is a richly layered, stylishly freewheeling thriller set in 1977 Brazil during the military dictatorship. It follows Marcelo, a former professor on the run, who arrives in Recife during Carnival seeking to reunite with his son but is drawn into a tense web of surveillance, danger, and surreal absurdity. Deliberately evoking the visual and thematic sensibilities of 1970s political thrillers like The French Connection and Serpico, THE Secret Agent delivers social critique, elements of satire and satisfying genre intensity.
The film was the most awarded title at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, winning Best Director (Kleber Medonca Filho), Best Actor (Wagner Moura), the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Art House Cinema Award. It also garnered multiple critics’ prizes and Golden Globes nominations for Best Motion Picture-Drama, Best Actor, and Best Non-English Picture. In year-end lists, it was named one of the Top International Films of 2025 by the National Board of Review and appeared in best-of lists from Cahiers du Cinema, BBC, NPR, and the New York Times.
R | Brazil | 2025 | 2h 38m
Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Starring Wagner Moura
In Portuguese, German and English, with English subtitles
“This is one of the year’s best films, and one of the most distinctive…If you’re willing to bend with the story, THE SECRET AGENT will take you places movies rarely go”
– Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com
“This smart, brutal, often funny thriller uses the travails of one ordinary man to capture a reactionary era in its daily realities and surreal absurdities, its public cruelty and private decency.”
– John Powers, NPR
“It’s a major achievement, and for my money, sure to be one of the best films of the year.”
– David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
“For his latest knockout, THE SECRET AGENT, the Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Menconca Filho embraces a freewheeling sensibility, and finds laughter amid the terror”
– Manohla Dargis, NY Times
“Brings history to life with bracing immediacy”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
