‘The Secret Agent’ Trailer – Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Thriller Revisits 1970’s Brazil Dictatorship Era

Directed by Mendonça Filho, The Secret Agent plunges you into 1970s Brazil military dictatorship era, where Marcelo (played by Wagner Moura) returns to Recife seeking refuge and reunion, only to find surveillance, suspicion, and forgotten secrets awaiting him.

The political thriller also stars Maria Fernanda Cândido, Gabriel Leone, Udo Kier, and Hermila Guedes.

The Secret Agent had its world premiere in competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it won Best Director for Mendonça Filho, Best Actor for Moura, and the FIPRESCI Prize, among others. It also screened at Telluride and later in the Special Presentations section at TIFF, followed by a run in the main slate at New York Film Festival.

It opens in U.S. theaters on November 26, 2025.

Here is the story:

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, 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.

Early reviews have been largely praise with Variety writing, “Mendonça shows a remarkable ability not just to re-create but to transport us back to that time, with its oppressive heat and paranoia.”

Watch the trailer for The Secret Agent above.