The movie Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto, 2025) by way of four-time Oscar nominee Kleber Mendonza Filho, whose rite will probably be held this week, March 15, once more offers with the Brazilian dictatorship across the personality of an educational at the run, compelled into hiding after clashing with the pursuits of huge firms, who need to pay for his or her arms in analysis.
From his first brief movies similar to Recife underneath the chilly (Recife Frio, 2009), the director has evolved a singular taste, wealthy in cinematographic references, that lies between arthouse cinema and style cinema. Those qualities succeed in new heights of formal freedom in The Secret Agent, which was once nominated in 4 Oscar classes, together with Absolute best Image and Absolute best Actor for Wagner Moore.
The movie is a part of a contemporary wave of Brazilian productions reminiscent of the army dictatorship (1964-1985), together with Walter Gross sales’ I am Nonetheless Right here (Ainda Estou Aqui) (2024) and Wagner Moura’s Mariguello (2019). However those movies don’t merely reconstruct historic episodes: they deal, via cinema, with an unresolved trauma whose repercussions proceed to form Brazil’s political provide.
Brazilian movie director Kleber Mendonsa Filho. Marco Barada/Alamy
Probably the most defining traits of The Secret Agent, which takes position most commonly in 1977, is the way in which the movie talks in regards to the Brazilian universities of the time, regarded as battlegrounds the place reminiscence, energy and democracy collide.
The movie’s primary personality, Armando, performed by way of Oscar nominee Moore for Absolute best Actor, isn’t in reality a undercover agent and has no obvious ties to opposition actions. He’s an educational who’s compelled into hiding after clashing with the pursuits of huge firms related to an authoritarian regime who need to pay money for his analysis.
Brazilian thinker Marilena Chaui spoke about her non-public revel in of this darkish duration in Brazilian historical past. Chaui returned from France in 1969, doctorate in hand, simply after the Brazilian army suspended maximum civil rights within the nation, resulting in a hunt for “communists” and intensified torture and censorship.
Chaui describes the presence on campus of mysterious army figures with the facility to rent, fireplace and “disappear” team of workers and scholars opposed to the regime. The presence of secret brokers disguised as scholars to observe professors and scholars in public college school rooms was once commonplace on the time.
In The Secret Agent, Armando has simply returned from Leeds College in the United Kingdom. He and the global analysis staff he based on the Federal College of Pernambuco, in northeastern Brazil, are intently adopted by way of Henrique Ghirotti, an industrialist from São Paulo.
Armando brazenly questions Girotti’s ethics and issues out the war of passion: how can a wealthy industrialist justify the diversion of public finances supposed for universities to personal functions? Armand’s sour response to such blatant corruption is sufficient to make him a person dealing with loss of life. A lot of the movie depicts Armando’s makes an attempt to flee Girotti, corrupt legislation enforcement, and the assassins he hires.
This dramatic scenario highlights now not simplest the surveillance and repression suffered by way of universities underneath the dictatorship, but additionally wider patterns of corruption. The spider internet linking army pursuits with large trade that undermined Brazil’s financial momentum within the Seventies is a tale this is simplest now starting to absolutely get to the bottom of.
The movie’s emphasis on educational freedom has a modern resonance. Mendonca Filho wrote The Secret Agent throughout the presidency of far-right Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), whose lengthy checklist of opposed measures integrated assaults on public training. Between 2019 and 2022, federal universities misplaced 14.4% in their funds, and by way of 2022 their investment had fallen beneath 2013 ranges.
Universities have reported serious difficulties in keeping up their core actions and scholarship methods, with cumulative cuts exceeding 100 billion reais (16 billion euros) over 4 years. Bolsonaro and his supporters have inspired reporting (and “cancelling” on social media) academics deemed “ideological.” After Lula’s victory within the 2022 elections, there was once a slight reduction and, with the renewal of financing strains, the reconstruction of this devastated land is slowly shifting ahead.
I am Nonetheless Right here, by way of Walter Salles, additionally explores the duration of army dictatorship in Brazil. Archive of repression
The Secret Agent additionally addresses renewed world debates over the privatization of study, highbrow belongings and the political vulnerability of universities, which can be an increasing number of observed as hotbeds of left-wing insurgency. Mendonce Filho’s movie means that authoritarianism assaults society now not simplest by way of direct violence, but additionally by way of destroying, privatizing or concealing the manufacturing of information.
Within the movie, the industrialist Girotti fortuitously informs Armando that he’ll counsel ultimate his analysis laboratory and shifting its paintings to the College of São Paulo, with which Girotti has doubtful connections. He questions the usefulness of any analysis performed within the Northeast that touches nationwide pursuits, particularly since Canadians are running at the identical era and Brazil can fund international science and era.
Mendonza Filho, at the beginning from Recife, Pernambuco’s capital, has been very open in regards to the deep-seated prejudices many citizens of the wealthier, whiter southern states have in opposition to the backward north. It’s about the truth that in The Secret Agent, Armand’s global seek staff was once first shaped in Leeds, for the reason that an identical prejudices steadily exist in opposition to the north of England.
In a subplot set within the provide day, a bunch of feminine scholars paintings on an oral historical past mission in keeping with tapes of dissidents throughout the dictatorship, together with Armand. One in all them, Flavia, is going to Pernambuco to discuss with Armando’s son, now middle-aged.
A tender black mom from the Northeast dwelling at the outskirts of São Paulo, Flavia embodies the brand new, extra various pupil inhabitants made conceivable by way of hard-won affirmative motion projects and the growth of the general public college community.
In The Secret Agent, Flavia and scholars like her have inherited now not simplest an archive of repression, but additionally the potential of remodeling wisdom right into a type of democratic reparation.
Development on Wagner Mura’s compelling efficiency, Mendonza Filho’s movie connects the struggles of the previous with the interest and braveness of a brand new technology. In doing so, The Secret Agent strongly emphasizes cinema’s talent now not simplest to entertain, but additionally to enlighten, query and encourage.
