During a brief visit to Lisbon, invited by the LEFFEST – Lisbon Film Festival for the premiere of “O Agente Secreto” directed by Kléber Mendonça, Wagner Moura spoke about the positive phase Brazilian cinema is experiencing: “Culture goes hand in hand with democracy. We are living a good moment. The artist is always stronger with what he does than with what he says.”
Discussing the film, which has won several awards and earned him the Best Actor prize at Cannes, Moura admits that the possibility of an Oscar in Hollywood is not something he dismisses: “Do I think about it? I hope…” he confesses. However, he mentions there’s still a long way to go, yet he believes that “O Agente Secreto” has the potential to be included in the foreign film category.
Set in Recife in 1977, “O Agente Secreto” is a political thriller that delves into the tensions of a country under a military regime, featuring Wagner Moura as Marcelo, a technology expert who returns to his hometown seeking peace but encounters an environment rife with secrets and dangers.
The actor emphasizes that art and democracy go hand in hand. In this context, he recalled that “the far right was very effective in saying that artists were against the people’s interests.” However, he argued, “it is not the intellectual elite that is against the people,” asserting that “the enemy of the people is the financial elite.”
Therefore, he argued, “the more democratic the government, the more it will understand that culture is important.”
“I am an artist who speaks a lot, but what we do holds much power,” he highlighted.
Living currently in Los Angeles, Moura spoke about the importance of memory as a catalyst for consciousness, with a pedagogical approach: “I was born during the dictatorship, we still need to talk about that time. We have this memory, Americans don’t. They think that democracy is the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Regarding this, Wagner Moura recalled an episode involving a Bolsonarist deputy who contacted U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to request the cancellation of the actor’s visa.
“What is frightening is that the truth, as we know it, is gone,” he said, referring to Artificial Intelligence and all technologies that allow reality to be manipulated, not forgetting to mention his own background in journalism, a “fundamental institution, which is in decline,” he warned.
