‘The Secret Agent’ is set to premiere commercially on November 6 in Portugal, simultaneously with Brazil. The Portuguese distributor, Nitrato Filmes, has scheduled pre-premiere screenings in Lisbon and Porto, with the director in attendance, who divides his time between Europe and Brazil.
After a sold-out presentation on Wednesday in Lisbon, amidst a crowd featuring many Brazilian spectators, Kléber Mendonça Filho will be in Porto from today until Sunday to present the film at Cinema Trindade, where most of the ten scheduled sessions have also sold out.
The 56-year-old Pernambucan director returns to Portugal, where he has regularly showcased his films since his early short films more than twenty years ago, preceding feature films like ‘Neighboring Sounds’ (2012), ‘Aquarius’ (2016), and ‘Ghost Portraits’ (2023).
Kléber Mendonça Filho premiered ‘The Secret Agent’ last May at the Cannes Film Festival (France), winning the award for best direction and the critics’ prize, while Wagner Moura received the award for best actor.
“These pre-premieres in Portugal are always special moments. It’s the first time the film, spoken in Portuguese, interacts with the Portuguese audience and with the Brazilian presence in Portugal, and that is special,” he said in an interview.
Alongside Wagner Moura, the extensive cast includes Alice Carvalho, Tânia Maria, Maria Fernanda Cândido, and Portuguese actress Isabél Zuaa, among others.
At the end of summer, ‘The Secret Agent’ will premiere in North America, with plans to feature at the Toronto festival (Canada), and an extensive international screening and promotion plan is being prepared, including in the United States, possibly eyeing the Oscars in 2026, following the acclaimed and successful journey of Walter Salles’ ‘Still Here’.
The story of ‘The Secret Agent’ is set in 1977, during a time of military dictatorship, when a public university technology researcher, Marcelo Alves (actor Wagner Moura), travels to Recife to reconnect with his family, trying to leave a mysterious past behind.
The researcher arrives during the carnival, stays in a safe house for dissidents and marginalized individuals, and, while trying to maintain contact with his young son, realizes he is being watched and in danger.
The film is presented as a period “political thriller,” but Kléber Mendonça Filho views it as a “cinematic chronicle with the logic of Brazil,” with a narrative layered with stories, atmospheres, and “almost tangible” memories of Recife in 1977, when he was nine years old.
It is not a film specifically about dictatorship or about corruption and crime; nor solely about progress and political agendas; nor just about the love of cinema and old theaters, the popular culture, or bizarre Z-series horror films; it encompasses all these aspects simultaneously, in Brazil.
“All these elements come from a person who is already in their 50s and is collecting observations of how things have changed. I find it very curious to write these details into the movie because they bring a sense of dense historical time,” he said.
Being a film about 1977, ‘The Secret Agent’ can also be interpreted in the light of current events, with the rise of radical and extremist right-wing movements, the intensification of populism, attacks on science and the progressive role of universities, or the migratory and refugee movements.
“For a long time, when I was writing the film, I thought no one would realize it’s about today, although it’s set in 1977. At the first session I held, someone said the film is about today, and I thought, what a failure!” the director remarked with a laugh.
