Cannes 2025 - The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho

The Secret Agent is a fascinating political thriller that feels both firmly anchored in Brazil’s tortured past and acutely attentive to the present. Set in 1970s Recife, at the height of the military dictatorship, the film works on several levels at once: as a genre piece, as a social portrait, and as a meditation on memory, surveillance and moral compromise. It is gripping without being schematic, dense without being didactic, and deeply atmospheric without ever descending into easy nostalgia. 

Taking place in 1970s Recife under the military regime, the film centres on a man caught between secrecy and survival as political repression tightens around him. What begins as a covert assignment unfolds into a broader portrait of a society living under constant observation, where private lives are inseparable from political reality.

At its surface, The Secret Agent unfolds like a political thriller, complete with clandestine meetings, coded exchanges and an ever-present sense of threat. Yet Kleber Mendonça Filho is far less interested in delivering a dry procedural thriller than focusing on the human side of it all. The plot moves with purpose, but it never overwhelms the characters, a rarity in a genre that is usually more about the narrative than the people. 

The Recife of the 1970s is rendered with extraordinary care. Streets, buildings, interiors and public spaces are not treated as lavish sets but as places of of lived experience. The film offers a richly layered social tapestry, attentive to class, race, and everyday life under authoritarian rule. The director avoids the obvious markers of period reconstruction, instead, the era feels alive and present through sounds, architecture, and rooms filled with people, with radios in the background, these rooms feeling heavy with heat and the weight of a shared, difficult history... 

There is a great confidence in the Kleber Mendonça Filho's direction is unafraid of tonal shifts, allowing moments of tension to give way to scenes of dialogues in which he takes his time to make space for his characters, especially early on, in ways that might confound fans of the genre. At times, the film edges into unexpected territory, with a surreal incursion into another genre that works perfectly. In fact this cinephile nod is entirely coherent with the director's work so far and the film echoes his recent documentary Pictures of Ghosts and its depiction of Recife and its old cinemas in unexpected and wonderful ways. With these two films cinephilia is not about references or winks but as an integral part of daily life. 

In the lead, Wagner Moura delivers a magnetic yet deliberately understated performance. He plays his character with a contained intensity and there is something almost old-school in his screen presence, a form of quietly assured masculinity.

The Secret Agent confirms Kleber Mendonça Filho as one of the most vital and interesting filmmakers working today. 

Review by Laurent de Alberti

Star rating: ★★★★★

Official Selection, in Competition.

The Secret Agent. Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. Starring Wagner Moura, Alice Carvalho...