Wagner Moura‘s character in “The Secret Agent” is not a “violent person.” But he’s about to make an exception.
“For this man, I would kill him with a hammer,” Moura says in the first teaser for “The Secret Agent” in a tense interrogation scene.
“The Secret Agent” is the latest film from director Kleber Mendonça Filho, the Brazilian auteur who made “Bacurau” and “Aquarius,” and his latest is a stylish period thriller about a man desperate to get out of Brazil or die trying. Specifically, it follows Marcelo in 1977 Brazil, who is a technology expert who arrives in Recife during Carnival hoping to reunite with his son, only to realize the city isn’t the non-violent refuge he seeks.
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The film was universally praised out of Cannes and subsequently scooped up by Neon, which is now releasing it theatrically in a limited capacity starting November 26. That is of course after it makes its rounds at Telluride, TIFF, and the New York Film Festival.
“The Secret Agent” was one of Neon’s many buys after it looked like it could be a contender for the Palme d’Or on the distributor’s quest to keep its Palme win streak alive. And though the top prize later went to another Neon release, Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” “The Secret Agent” took home some serious hardware, the rare film to win both Best Director and Best Actor for Moura.
That performance from Moura, whom American audiences will recognize for his work on “Narcos” and in Alex Garland’s “Civil War,” is one that IndieWire’s David Ehrlich called “deceptively recessive” and one that “Mendonça mines for its errant sense of mystery from the movie’s opening scene.” It’s not hard to imagine a world where Moura works his way into the awards conversation, and potentially “The Secret Agent” itself for Best International Film.
IndieWire in its review also compared “The Secret Agent” to something like “The Grand Budapest Hotel” or “I”m Still Here,” movies that also “hinge on the tragic poignancy of their stolen pasts,” while also playing with B-movie tropes.
“The Secret Agent” also stars Maria Fernanda Cândido and Gabriel Leone. Check out the first teaser for the film below:
