O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent). 2025. Brazil/France/Netherlands/Germany. Written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. With Wagner Moura, Gabriel Leone, Maria Fernanda Candido. DCP courtesy NEON. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 158 min.
In the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, a widowed academic arrives in Recife during Carnival to reunite with his son. Seeking refuge in the Northeastern city, he adopts a new name and job and shares a dwelling with political refugees. With a rich, multifaceted structure—as subtle, slick, and deceptive as a two-faced cat—Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film explores his country’s turbulent relationship with political memory by building an absorbing, fascinating tale about a simple man who finds himself in the midst of a perplexing conspiracy, where political oppression, corruption, human cruelty, and the love of cinema are cards in a rigged game between the powerful and the poor.
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