The Secret Agent is one of the best films of 2025. A gripping film about life under dictatorship, Wagner Moura’s performance is one of the best of the year. This film is vibrant, full of life, and features wonderful period-specific detail.

Authoritarianism lies to your face. Authoritarianism has no respect for your intelligence. Authoritarianism looks at a dead body and sees nothing. Authoritarianism glances at the abject dehumanization of letting a person rot under cardboard and amongst roaming dogs. That material body may as well not exist at all. Authoritarianism infects the printing press, delicately – or with no holds barred, who’s to stop them – reshaping a story. A severed leg jumps of its own free will, attacking gay men in a park. A man is gunned down in the street. He is corrupt, the media reports. There was a mandate to justify his killing.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is a refracting prism of a film. It is a remarkable film, as it requires active work from the audience to fully absorb the movements of the movie. How does this class of characters slot into the story? Are their intentions pure? When did this happen in the narrative? What is real? Wagner Moura’s Armando is a professor on the run. He is attempting to pick up his young son in Recife and flee the dictatorship, of which he has become a target. He finds refuge in an apartment complex run by Dona Sebastiana, embodied by the effervescent Tania Maria. This apartment, we learn, is filled with political refugees, seeking shelter in this light-filled, warm home. 

The casting of The Secret Agent is an immediate stand-out, some of the best of the year. Every face, of which there are fifty-plus cast members, fits into the period of the late 1970s. Actor’s faces have character, with visible blemishes and wrinkles. Casting director Gabriel Domingues was specific with selecting cast members that represent the beautiful diversity of Brazil, with actors perfectly cast to fit and represent the socioeconomic position of their character. Even better, many of the performers were non-actors. The previously mentioned Tania Maria only had one role before this 2025 film, as an extra on a previous Kleber Mendonça Filho project. 

The ambience of The Secret Agent is indescribable. While a constant anxiety is felt while watching this film, as Moura is forced to try on new identities to avoid being caught, there are moments of peace. A beautiful shot of the city of Recife, framed by a window in a movie theater’s back room, is an example of cinematographer Evgenia Alexandrova’s wonderful work on this film. The Secret Agent flashes between modern day and 1977. While the modern scenes are purposefully a bit more gray and muted, every scene in the body of the film is vibrant. The mise-en-scène of this film takes you to another place and time, simultaneously assaulted by the violence and the life of this period of Brazilian history. 

The Secret Agent is one of 2025’s best films. The film’s details and vignettes are instrumental in the absorbing world-building and fantastic work representing the historical period. These details are everything from the references to the then-contemporary Jaws, to a stunning use of Donna Summers’ “Love to Love You Baby.”. In recent news, the film was nominated for the Academy Awards in four categories: Best Casting, Best Actor, Best International Feature, and Best Picture. It is wonderful to see a Brazilian film receive love at the Academy Awards, and hopefully (I personally am crossing my fingers for a Casting win) the film finishes the night with a statue. 

Grade: B+

Where to Watch: In Theaters