The Secret Agent

“A tremendous, novelistic study of corruption in high and low places.” ★★★★★ The Guardian

Oscar-nominated for Best Picture, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian epic of shadowy politics is a noir in blazing sunlight, justly recognised as a major feat of filmmaking. Wagner Moura (also Oscar-nominated for Best Actor) is Armando, a man on the run from a regime who views him with suspicion and has hounded him from his former life. Taking an alias, he hopes his government job will help him grasp the truth before the authorities catch him.

Comparisons have been drawn to City of God, I’m Still Here and Roma, fellow epic sweep Latin American films that digest a whole society. Yet The Secret Agent is very much its own beast, moving with languor but real power. Seductive and complex, this is a roiling study of a dictatorship, but viewed through the dramatic lives of individuals, not grand politics.