THE SECRET AGENT

Proudly presented as part of our Oscars Film Week at FOMO Secret Cinema.

Kleber Mendonça Filho | 2025 | Brazil | 2h41m | Portuguese with English subtitles | 10-minute intermission

THE SECRET AGENT is Kleber Mendonça Filho’s most overtly political work, set during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Blending historical drama, paranoia thriller, and social observation, the film constructs a portrait of life under systemic surveillance.

The story follows a man navigating a world shaped by informants, state monitoring, and unspoken fear. Ordinary routines become charged with risk as public life and private thought collapse into each other. Mendonça Filho builds tension slowly, allowing dread to accumulate through gesture, silence, and ambient unease rather than overt confrontation.

Like AQUARIUS and BACURAU, the film interrogates how political power embeds itself into architecture, language, and everyday behavior. Here, repression operates quietly, shaping social conduct long before violence becomes visible.

THE SECRET AGENT explores how authoritarian systems transform citizens into self regulating subjects, forcing constant calculation, caution, and moral compromise. It is both a historical reckoning and a contemporary warning.