— Best Director and Best Actor, FIPRESCI Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 2025

— Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival, 2025

Brazil, the 1970s — a dangerous time under military dictatorship. Scientist Marcelo suddenly finds himself on the run when a corrupt minister seeks to seize his research. Pursued by hired killers, he heads back to his coastal hometown. Amid the chaos of Carnival, police violence, and a clandestine resistance movement, Marcelo has only one goal: to reunite with his son so they can escape the country together.

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s fourth feature film is too rich in contradictions and complexities to be encapsulated in two paragraphs. It is the most delicate yet blood-soaked portrayal of police brutality and carnival sweat, a postcard to the director’s hometown of Recife in the 1970s, filled with urban legends ("The hairy leg walks the streets!") and a boom in American genre cinema. It is a thriller about a man on the run during a country’s military dictatorship, and ultimately, a contemporary political film on a theme all too familiar in Ukraine—cultural amnesia and silencing.

Mendonça Filho ventures into numerous themes and propels even more ideas in his film, making it impossible to expect their full embodiment. Yet, he firmly holds onto his protagonist and the narrative of his story. This is a demanding film that does not insist on its demands. The Secret Agent, awarded several prizes at Cannes this year, is truly an epic mosaic, shattered and scattered before the audience, who can reassemble it in their own configuration or simply accept it as it is.

— Festival Curator: Serhiy Ksaverov