---
title: "The Secret Agent"
year: 2025
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-secret-agent"
fi1m_id: "the-secret-agent"
imdb_id: "tt27847051"
tmdb_id: 1220564
wikidata_id: "Q132531438"
fi1m_score: 84
critics_score: 87
critics_reviews: 19
published: "2026-09-09"
updated: "2026-09-18T08:37:45.313771+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Secret Agent (2025)

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho · 2h 41m · MPA R · Thriller, Drama, Crime

## Identity

The Secret Agent

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/film/the-secret-agent
- **Type:** Film
- **Fi1m ID:** the-secret-agent
- **IMDb ID:** tt27847051
- **TMDB ID:** 1220564
- **Wikidata ID:** Q132531438
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27847051/, https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1220564, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q132531438

**Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 87 from 19 reviews

*In a sentence:* A man with three names hides in the sweatiest city in Brazil while the newspapers fret about a leg found in a shark

> Kleber Mendonça Filho’s thriller about a hunted man in Recife in 1977 is funny, frightening and made with great care, and Wagner Moura holds it together by hardly moving. It is also long, and the present-day scenes are where you feel it.

## Synopsis

Recife, 1977, the week of Carnival. Brazil is under military rule and a man calling himself Marcelo (Wagner Moura) arrives in the city with a suitcase and a name that may not be his. He takes a room in a house where nobody asks why anybody is there, and sets about two things: seeing his young son, and getting the papers that will let him leave the country. Someone with influence has other plans and has sent men, among them Bobbi (Gabriel Leone), to find him. Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) keeps him hidden; Hans (Udo Kier) is an old German who has been in town long enough to know how it works. Meanwhile the newspapers are full of a human leg found inside a shark.

## Review

Kleber Mendonça Filho has made a film about a woman who will not leave her flat (*Aquarius*) and one about a village that will not be wiped off the map (*Bacurau*). *The Secret Agent* is about a man who cannot stay anywhere. Wagner Moura plays him, and the credits give him three names, which tells you something. He arrives in Recife in the Carnival week of 1977, in the middle of the military dictatorship, takes a room in a house full of people who would rather not say why they are there, and tries to see his young son and get the papers that will let him leave the country. Someone with money would prefer he did neither. It is one of the better thrillers we have seen in some time, funny and frightening by turns, and it takes 161 minutes over a story that might have been told in 140.

Moura’s job is to look ordinary, and he does it by doing almost nothing. Marcelo keeps his shoulders down and his voice level, and the film’s best scenes are the ones where he sits across a desk from someone who is deciding whether he lives, and we watch him work out how much to smile. He is a man used to being clever who has learned that cleverness is now dangerous. When he is allowed to relax, with his boy or in the dark of a cinema, the change in his face is small, and it is the whole point.

Evgenia Alexandrova shoots Recife as a city where nobody is ever dry. Shirts stick to backs, the light is yellow by mid-morning, and she likes a long lens across a crowded street so that the man we are following is one figure among hundreds who could be anyone. Thales Junqueira’s production design puts 1977 in every corner: the boarding house of mismatched chairs and a shared telephone, the police offices with their desk fans and typewriters, a cinema with a painted front the size of a house, and cars in colours nobody has ordered since. None of it is shown off.

The film runs a newspaper story about a human leg found inside a shark through its first hour, and the whole city treats it as light entertainment. We laughed. Then Mendonça Filho shows us, plainly and in daylight, how ordinary the people doing the dictatorship’s dirty work are, as bored as plumbers, and we stopped laughing and felt slightly foolish for having started. The absurd and the murderous sit at the same table here, and nobody at the table thinks that is odd.

The supporting cast is full of people you want to follow home. Udo Kier’s Hans is an old German who has been in Brazil long enough to have his own way of not answering questions, and Kier gives him a courtesy that is more unsettling than rudeness would be. Gabriel Leone plays Bobbi, one of the men sent after Marcelo, as handsome, tired and not much interested in why. Maria Fernanda Cândido’s Elza keeps the network of hiding places running with the manner of a woman organising a church fete. Alice Carvalho, as Fátima, shares the house and gets one of the film’s few scenes of plain kindness.

Matheus Farias and Eduardo Serrano cut between 1977 and a present-day thread in which people go through archives and listen to old recordings. The cuts are clean and the idea is sound: this is a country going back through its own paperwork. But every return to the present stops the Recife story dead, and it was in those rooms, not in the heat, that we felt the running time. The score by Mateus Alves and Tomaz Alves de Souza mostly keeps its head down and lets the radio and the street carry the noise, which is the right decision.

Most critics have reached for Hitchcock, and there is something in it: an ordinary man, a false name, people who know more about him than he does. But Hitchcock would have cut half of this and been ashamed of the shark. Set against Mendonça Filho’s own work, it is warmer than *Bacurau* and less angry than *Aquarius*, and it shares with *Pictures of Ghosts* a fondness for old cinemas and the paper trails people leave behind.

See it in a cinema if you can, where the heat comes off the screen and into your seat. Take water, and do not plan anything afterwards.

*Fi1m score 84, published 9 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews for The Secret Agent are almost uniformly warm, and the spread is narrow: nothing lands below a solid pass and several critics reach for the top of the scale. Praise clusters in two places. The first is Wagner Moura, whom most critics single out for a restrained, vulnerable lead performance as a man trying to slip out of the reach of the dictatorship. The second is the recreation of Recife in 1977, which critics describe as sweaty, garish and precise, with the period detail carrying much of the film’s feeling. Many also admire how Mendonça Filho mixes a thriller with absurdist comedy, surreal detours and his own love of cinemas and archives, and most find that the mixture holds.

The reservations are few and mild. Deadline calls it overlong and prone to rambling, and The Wrap finds it messy, though it treats the mess as part of the point. Nobody argues it is dull.

## Straight answers

**Is The Secret Agent worth watching?**

*The Secret Agent* is worth watching for anyone with patience for a slow, sweaty political thriller, and we scored it 84. Wagner Moura is quietly excellent as a hunted man in 1977 Recife, and the film is funny and frightening in the same breath. It runs 161 minutes, and the present-day archive scenes are where you feel every one of them.

**How long is The Secret Agent, and what is it rated?**

*The Secret Agent* runs 2h 41m and is rated R by the MPA in the US. It is a thriller and drama film.

**Where can I watch The Secret Agent in the US?**

*The Secret Agent* is streaming on Disney+ in the US, and it is also available to rent from Amazon Prime Video from $5.99. Availability is checked daily; the links above go straight to each service.

**How violent or frightening is The Secret Agent, and is it suitable for children?**

*The Secret Agent* is a 15 in the UK and an R in the US, and it is not for children. The violence is not constant, but the film shows plainly how ordinary the men doing a dictatorship's killing are, and that daylight matter-of-factness is what unsettles. Older teenagers who can sit through a long, talky thriller should be fine.

**How does The Secret Agent compare to Z?**

*The Secret Agent* and [*Z*](https://film.one/film/z) are both thrillers about a state hunting a man, but Costa-Gavras cuts his like a chase and argues like a prosecutor, while Mendonça Filho lets his sprawl through a hot, funny, crowded city. *Z* is the tighter and more urgent film; *The Secret Agent* is warmer and richer in character. Pick *Z* for pace, this one for atmosphere.

**What should I watch after The Secret Agent?**

After *The Secret Agent*, try [*Z*](https://film.one/film/z) (1969, Fi1m 84): Costa-Gavras on a state murder and its cover-up, cut like a chase. Then [*The Conformist*](https://film.one/film/the-conformist) (1970, Fi1m 87): Bertolucci’s study of a man who goes along with fascism, shot in shadow; and [*Argentina, 1985*](https://film.one/film/argentina-1985) (2022, Fi1m 80): A dictatorship put on trial, told with a lightness that sneaks up on you.

### Reviews we read (26)

- **Little White Lies**, Rafa Sales Ross (5/5/5): Mendonça Filho’s most refined, outright-auteurist work yet, an intimate epic that always delivers the unexpected with head-spinning craft. Moura anchors this tale of history as an afterlife with a terrific encapsulation of hopelessness that masks itself as resilience. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/the-secret-agent)
- **Empire**, Siddhant Adlakha (90/100, inferred): The critic calls it an astonishing cinematic experience that lures the past into the present, praising the rich period details, vivid supporting characters, surreal detours, and how it roots its story of authoritarianism in deeply human dilemmas and resilience. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/the-secret-agent-2025/)
- **The AV Club**, Natalia Keogan (A-): The review highlights the film's interweaving of politics, espionage, and cinema love, praising its detailed recreation of 1970s Recife and emotional depth through personal and historical lenses. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-secret-agent-review)
- **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (90/100, inferred): The critic lauds the film as a political thriller teeming with life, overflowing with sharply drawn characters and offering a bracingly immediate portrayal of history under dictatorship, with inventive cinematic form. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/12/08/the-secret-agent-movie-review)
- **The Times**, Kevin Maher (90/100, inferred): It’s a kaleidoscopic riot that quickly becomes a gear-shifting masterpiece. Wagner Moura plays the central character with vulnerability that makes you yearn for him to best Timothée Chalamet. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-oscar-3nvlptw59)
- **Evening Standard**, Nick Howells (85/100, inferred): The critic hails it as a hypnotic thriller and piece of cinematic gold, praising Wagner Moura's shimmering lead performance, the scorched equatorial atmosphere, intoxicating music, surreal symbolism, and the deep-fried Brazilian rhythm of its story set during the military dictatorship. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-oscars-b1270823.html)
- **Vulture** (85/100, inferred): The critic lauds the film's complex portrait of resistance under dictatorship, noting its evocative period detail, strong lead performance, and thematic links to cinema and memory. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/the-secret-agent-and-the-year-in-movies-about-resistance.html)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (80/100, inferred): Kleber Mendonça Filho’s tale of loss and injustice in 1977 Brazil comes styled with brilliant pulp trappings. The strange, teasing note sets the tone for a rich and singular movie. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/d7a70700-af45-4c80-b383-b52bf3c1c493)
- **Slant Magazine**, Mark Hanson (80/100, inferred): The review commends the propulsive thriller's vivid recreation of 1970s Brazil, its mix of genre tension with surreal elements, and its thoughtful engagement with cinema, politics, and personal history. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-kleber-mendonca-filho/)
- **The Telegraph**, Robbie Collin (4/5): This sparklingly seductive Oscar contender from Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho rivals a Hitchcock thriller. The slipperiness of names and agendas is one of the central themes. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/the-secret-agent-review/)
- **Time Out**, Dave Calhoun (4/5): A twisty, tense, languorous 1970s-set Brazilian drama that captures the absurdity and suffocation of life under a corrupt dictatorship. It is vicious and vivid in its sense of place and danger but also has a streak of weirdness and a very human take on the political-crime thriller genre. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-secret-agent-review-2025)
- **Variety**, Peter Debruge (80/100, inferred): The critic calls it a terrific ’70s thriller and dazzling period drama that immerses viewers in 1977 Recife under dictatorship, praising its robust sense-memory, genre-skewing elements, and vivid time-capsule details. [Read](https://variety.com/2025/film/reviews/the-secret-agent-review-o-agente-secreto-1236402205/)
- **Screen Daily**: A sweat-saturated riot of a movie: a dual-timeline thriller powered by anarchic, erratic energy. Tonally an unexpected blend of the bloody gusto of Bacurau and the more thoughtful approach of Pictures of Ghosts, with fascination with archives, oral histories and cinemas. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-secret-agent-review-kleber-mendonca-filhos-1970s-brazilian-thriller-is-riot-of-a-movie/5205206.article)
- **Sight and Sound**: The Brazilian director’s stellar filmmaking and sharp storytelling make this portrait of life under dictatorship as politically incisive as it is entertaining. A consummate cinephile, Mendonça Filho is the rare director who conceives of cinema politically and as entertainment, rendering the film riveting for all 158 minutes. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/secret-agent-masterful-genre-inflected-epic-from-kleber-mendonca-filho)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s study of a man attempting to escape corrupt politics is a tremendous, novelistic study of corruption in high and low places. The film combines visual brilliance, sensual big-city intrigue, shaggy-dog comedy and epically languorous mystery. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/may/20/the-secret-agent-review-brilliant-brazilian-drama-of-an-academic-on-the-run-in-the-murderous-1970s)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney: The critic praises the film's blend of anarchic humor and genuine suspense in a period political thriller, highlighting Wagner Moura's stellar performance and the director's masterful exploration of Brazil's past. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-kleber-mendonca-filho-1236220752/)
- **The New York Times**, Manohla Dargis (Critic’s Pick): The critic praises the film as a knockout that finds laughter amid the terror of Brazil's military dictatorship, highlighting its freewheeling sensibility and the standout performance by Wagner Moura. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/movies/the-secret-agent-review.html)
- **The Observer**, Wendy Ide: Kleber Mendonça Filho is at the top of his game with the sprawling, anarchic, supremely entertaining 1970s-set thriller. Not a moment drags and every frame is vibrant and full-blooded. [Read](https://observer.co.uk/culture/film/article/the-secret-agent-review-anarchic-supremely-entertaining-thriller)
- **HeyUGuys**, Linda Marric (5/5): The film is an expansive, original, and tonally daring epic blending intrigue, absurdist comedy, grotesque violence, and bureaucratic paranoia. It stands out for its refusal to conform to thriller expectations and for Wagner Moura's formidable, deeply human performance as a man navigating moral compromise and existential dread. [Read](https://www.heyuguys.com/the-secret-agent-review/)
- **The Playlist**, Carlos Aguilar (A+): An imposing masterpiece that coalesces the director’s prior aesthetic and ideological concerns into an expansive triumph steeped in history and a palpable adoration for cinema. It matches the caliber of films like Roma in its use of historical context and recreation of a specific time and place, with a chameleonic lead performance by Wagner Moura. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-commands-stunning-brazilian-crime-drama-steeped-in-history-a-palpable-adoration-for-cinema-cannes-20250518/)
- **The Skinny**, Ben Nicholson (★★★★★): The critic commends the film's novelistic depth in portraying Recife under military rule, weaving a thriller with multiple stories of resistance and community. It praises the dexterous balance of tones, rich details, and strong performances that create cumulative emotional force. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/the-secret-agent)
- **Den of Geek**, Joe George (85/100, inferred): The critic highlights how the film finds its revolutionary power in everyday human moments and quiet personal desires amid the dictatorship's banal cruelty and surreal absurdities. It emphasizes the protagonist's simple quest for memory and safety as a form of resistance. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-secret-agent-revolutionary-spirit-mundane-humanity/)
- **Eye for Film**, Anne-Katrin Titze (85/100, inferred): Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film places Marcelo in the tradition of ordinary men thrust into political intrigue, evoking Hitchcock while rooting the story in Recife during 1977 carnival amid Brazil’s dictatorship. It mixes absurdity and realism, mischief and horror, using cinema references and everyday details to show how authoritarianism distorts justice and reality. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/the-secret-agent-2025-film-review-by-anne-katrin-titze)
- **The Wrap**, Steve Pond (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as a mischievous and messy romp set in 1970s Recife during Carnaval, with secret identities, brutal action, and garish period style. Its lack of coherence is part of its charm and deliberate point. [Read](https://www.thewrap.com/the-secret-agent-review-70s-brazilian-romp-includes-wagner-moura-and-a-rampaging-severed-leg/)
- **Deadline**, Pete Hammond (75/100, inferred): The critic finds Wagner Moura convincing as a man of mystery in this political thriller set during Brazil's dictatorship. The film is stylish and exciting on a widescreen scale despite being overlong and sometimes rambling. [Read](https://deadline.com/2025/05/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura-brazilian-thriller-cannes-film-festival-1236402956/)
- **Collider**, Ross Bonaime: The critic calls the film a remarkable, beautifully composed historical thriller with some of the year's best directing, editing, and writing, plus an enthralling lead performance. They single out Wagner Moura's subtly tremendous, restrained work as one of the year's best. [Read](https://collider.com/the-secret-agent-review-wagner-moura/)

## Details

- **Director:** Kleber Mendonça Filho
- **Director:** Kleber Mendonça Filho
- **Writer:** Kleber Mendonça Filho
- **Cinematography:** Evgenia Alexandrova
- **Editor:** Eduardo Serrano, Matheus Farias
- **Music:** Mateus Alves, Tomaz Alves de Souza
- **Production design:** Thales Junqueira
- **Producer:** Emilie Lesclaux, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Winston Araújo
- **Cast:** Wagner Moura as Marcelo Alves / Armando Solimões / Fernando Solimões; Alice Carvalho as Fátima; Gabriel Leone as Bobbi; Isabél Zuaa as Tereza Victória; Maria Fernanda Cândido as Elza; Udo Kier as Hans; Robson Andrade as Clóvis; Rubens Santos as Natalício
- **Runtime:** 2h 41m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 26 November 2025
- **Genres:** Thriller, Drama, Crime
- **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 2025); [Golden Globe Best Drama winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-drama.md) (Nominee, 2025)
- **Budget:** $5 million
- **Box office:** $19 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UfrzDKrhEc

## Where to watch in the US

- Disney+: add-on, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $5.99, uhd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $19.99, uhd

*Checked 2026-09-10.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CL, CO, DE, DK, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, MX, NL, PA, PT, SE, TH, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2026: Best International Feature Film (nominated); Best Picture (nominated)
- Golden Globes 2026: Best Non-English Language Film (won)
- APRECI Award for Best International Premiere 2025: APRECI Award for Best International Premiere (won)
- FIPRESCI Grand Prix 2025: FIPRESCI Grand Prix (nominated)

## If you liked this

- *Aquarius* (2016): Mendonça Filho’s earlier Recife film, with Sônia Braga refusing to be moved.
- *Z* (1969), Fi1m 84: Costa-Gavras on a state murder and its cover-up, cut like a chase. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/z.md)
- *The Conformist* (1970), Fi1m 87: Bertolucci’s study of a man who goes along with fascism, shot in shadow. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-conformist.md)
- *Night Moves* (1975): Gene Hackman as a detective who understands nothing; the seventies at their most tired.
- *Argentina, 1985* (2022), Fi1m 80: A dictatorship put on trial, told with a lightness that sneaks up on you. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/argentina-1985.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-secret-agent