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The Secret Agent
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The Secret Agent
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- 2025
- Kleber Mendonça Filho
- 160 mins
- 15
Summary
Political drama starring Wagner Moura. In 1977, at the height of Brazil's military dictatorship, a man calling himself "Marcelo" arrives in the northern city of Recife. He plans to reunite with his young son and flee the country, but time is ticking: it will take a few days for a fake passport to come through, and two men have been sent to kill him.
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Review
A star rating of 4 out of 5.
James Mottram
This pleasingly unclassifiable 1970s-set Brazilian tale follows a man with a mysterious past who seeks to reconnect with his young son. Wagner Moura (TV's Narcos) is fantastic as Marcelo - just one of the names the character goes by - who arrives in sweltering Recife, having fled the north of the country. His lad is obsessed by Steven Spielberg's Jaws and his father-in-law runs a local movie theatre, but these are just a sprinkling of the elements that go into a complex story dealing with corruption, chaos and carnival. Kleber Mendonça Filho (Bacurau) won the best director award at Cannes, and deservedly so: he conjures up a consistently surprising and inventive look at a bygone era, dotted with nicely rendered period detail. This is a world where death permeates every frame, from a rotting corpse on a garage forecourt to the gruesome sight of a man's severed leg inside a dead shark. Filled with weird asides (like the aforementioned leg, starring in its own exploitation flick) and even a present-day wraparound story, this is unusual, and sometimes extraordinary, film-making.
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7.2/10
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Credits
Cast
rolenameMarcelloWagner Moura
Crew
rolenameWriterKleber Mendonça FilhoDirectorKleber Mendonça Filho
Details
Theatrical distributor
Mubi
Released on
2026-02-20
Languages
English | German | Portuguese
Guidance
Violence, swearing, sex scenes
Formats
Colour
News & features about The Secret Agent
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