Sydney Film Festival 2025 - The Secret Agent

 “It’s hard to live under another name.”

Enduring, magnetic and layered, The Secret Agent is an atmospheric and visceral recreation of the intense political climate of late 1970’s Brazil that follows a dissident in hiding played masterfully by Wagner Moura in a film that lets the shadows of the path ripple right to the foreground. 

Discussion Points:

Auteur director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s slow burn examination of the oppressive military dictatorship of Brazil through the lens of internal refugees in hiding from their own government is both cinematically escapist and deeply established. It’s consistently confronting in its historical reality even as it utilises surreal moments to illuminate how humour and satire sustained a society that was deeply overshadowed by fear and haunted by abuse. Wagner Moura magnetically invite the audience to journey with him for nearly 3 hours as he attempts to find answers and release from the questions that hang over him and the pursuants tasked with his demise. The film is far from being a high-octane spy thriller, but it still manages to enthrall as deep webs of corruption and deceit are revealed, both chronologically and in reverse from the present as it reflects and looks back on the past. Mendonça Filho faithfully and atmospherically captures the period through time specific cinematic techniques which evoke films of the era whilst also paying homage to the staples of the espionage and political thriller genres throughout.