The Secret Agent

A man with a beard wearing a blue shirt leaning with one hand against a pole at what looks like a gas station. There is a yellow car to his right and it appears to be an arrid climate.

Amid the raucous revelry of Carnival week, a widower named Marcelo (Wagner Moura) arrives in 1977 in Recife, Brazil, a city as vibrant as it is violent. A technology researcher who suddenly finds himself an unwitting target in the heart of the dictatorship's political maelstrom, Marcelo is a man on the run from mercenary killers, from ghosts of the past and from the ruthless, mischievously militant spirit of Brazil in 1977. In the midst of these mounting threats, Marcelo, with the help of a mysterious woman named Elza and her compatriots in the country's growing underground resistance movement, remains primarily focused on escaping Brazil with his young son.

Master filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho teams up with renowned actor Wagner Moura — giving an extraordinary, career-defining performance — to craft a thrillingly unpredictable, playfully shape-shifting epic steeped in history even as it feels remarkably contemporary, paying affectionate tribute to the movies of Filho’s youth while unfolding against the backdrop of political turmoil and palpable danger.

The Secret Agent will be presented in conjunction with Pictures of Ghosts, a 2023 documentary from director Kleber Mendonça Filho that offers a richly textured journey through time, architecture, and cinema in the city of Recife.

Free admission! Sponsored by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at the Einaudi Center for International Studies.

The screening is presenting in conjunction with the course "Cinematic Cities," taught by Professors Cecelia Lawless (Romance Studies) and Patricia Keller (Comparative Literature).

Part of "Doc Spots" and our "Campus Collaborations" series. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Courtesy of NEON.