With just five features to his name (four of which premiered at Cannes), writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho has swiftly, firmly established himself as a vital figure of Brazilian cinema. His latest, The Secret Agent, tells the story of a former professor caught in the political turmoil of Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1977. The atmospheric, propulsively rendered film won both Best Director and Best Actor prizes at Cannes and has been submitted by its home country to compete at the upcoming Oscars.
Mendonça Filho was the Filmmaker in Focus at the Filmfest Hamburg, where we had the chance to speak with him about mixing genres, investigating the past, and fighting the very Brazilian instinct to look away. Ahead of the film’s U.S. release beginning this Wednesday, November 26, read the conversation below.
The Film Stage: One of the things that struck me while watching The Secret Agent is that it’s so many different things: a mystery, a political thriller, a family drama. It even has a splash of supernatural horror / absurdist comedy. Was this mix of genres on your mind when you set out to make the film?
Kleber Mendonça Filho: That probably came from my desire to write a film that is full of dynamics. I thought about pieces of music and sound recordings that may start with a whisper or conversation, but have the space for explosions. I thought about a song like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which is six minutes long and begins softly but keeps building and building.
I also profoundly dislike these screenwriting rules that say you’re not supposed to do this or that because you have to “keep the story moving.” Which is true, and I think I do keep my stories moving, but we also have time to stop and look at a few things. That’s the logic of life, not the logic of movies. We can have a perfectly peaceful life, but it might still be marked by moments of fear and doubt and even terror. I think all of that you can put in a film.
I also just had the desire to do a thriller and would allow myself to go to places where thrillers typically go—like a foot chase, people being gunned down, the mystery of not knowing who you are. Things like that. That’s one way to answer your question.
The film authentically recreated late-70s Brazil, thanks in part to the many extraordinary and highly specific plot points—the human leg found in a shark’s belly, the mass casualty at a carnival. Is anything in the film based on or inspired by real-life events?
I would say it’s based on life in Brazil in general. When I was a kid my parents told me about the death tolls during carnivals. In those days, cars were a lot less safe and it was normal to drink and drive. So there were a lot of car accidents, drownings, and also fights, robberies, or plain murders. It was a wild time.
That led me to think: would the military use this as an excuse to get rid of certain people? It’s interesting to think about the logic of a country, how it operates. That’s what I do when I make my films. For example: the idea that someone would pull a few strings to get privileged treatment in court, like the woman giving her testimony in the film. That’s the kind of thing that may well have happened. Of course, in the film I turned it into theater—the whole scene is pretty theatrical.
It’s interesting when you tell stories based on a foundation that’s real. You can recognize the reality of it because there’s truth to the inner logic. In this sense, I think there’s a lot of truth to this film.
As a non-Brazilian, there must be tons of historical references in the film I didn’t pick up. For example: can you talk about the opening sequence which introduces various Brazilian cultural figures?
It’s just, like, an album of pictures from 1970s Brazil. You get a comedy group that was very popular on TV, a very famous soap opera [Escrava Isaura], an amazing pop star who’s 80 and still going [Caetano Veloso], and a brilliant Brazilian thriller from 1977, which is a strong reference for this film called Lucio Flavio. It was just recently restored.
It reminds me of James Gray’s We Own the Night, which I really like and begins with an archive picture of policemen in New York City. It’s one way of inviting the viewer into the film. I’ve done that in a number of my films, like Neighboring Sounds and Aquarius.
And what about the frequent cuts to portraits hanging on the walls?
In these government buildings they always have a picture of the leader up. In those times I think they made a special point to have that picture up just about everywhere. Those shots are not incredibly relevant, but I find it interesting—like, the characters would be having a conversation and the camera just zooms to the picture on the wall. And towards the end, when a character is asking for help in the auditorium, there’s a picture of somebody on the right. There we cut to the drawings of the suspects with a board full of 100 faces of scoundrels and thieves.
So the whole theme of identity is a strong through-line of the film. Even during the script stage, I noticed there are so many elements related to identity in the script, which is not something that I planned. If you look at Udo Kier’s character, the German tailor, he’s covered in scars. That’s his identity.
Can you talk about your choice to name this film The Secret Agent? I noticed only one direct reference when the phrase flashes across a TV screen at some point during the film.
That’s from the film Le Magnifique. What you saw was a moment in the trailer that says “France’s top secret agent.” I think it’s just a short and sexy title. And I think the film has enough intrigue, mystery, people with fake names on the run, and secret organizations trying to fix things. I also think it makes for good conversation for viewers who saw the film to ask each other afterwards, “Why The Secret Agent?”
The main character in the film searches for documents proving his mother’s existence at a public archive. Decades later, a young woman goes through recordings from the time of the main character’s story. Has this type of investigation of the past really been going on in Brazil? Is it still ongoing?
That’s a good question, and the answer is: yes and no. In 1979—two years after the story of the film, when the dictatorship was beginning to show signs of crumbling—the military proposed and passed the Amnesty Law, which would forgive them and also those who fought the dictatorship, so that everything could “begin again.” Everything that had happened would be forgotten. All the violence, kidnappings, murders, rapes, torture—everything would be erased. “Let’s not talk about these things again, so unpleasant”.
The good thing is that many exiles who escaped to Europe could come back, but the ethical problem is that the military was forgiven for what they did. And I think that traumatized the country. Because we didn’t deal with the facts, didn’t deal with the past, which I think is a very Brazilian thing. This is so deeply rooted in the Brazilian culture that even during the Lula government—which I’m a huge admirer of—the subject was never touched. The one who did something about it is Dilma, who was elected after Lula. She was re-elected and then impeached and ousted in a very cynical, “legal” coup d’état. Dilma herself had been tortured in the early 1970s, and in her first term, she started the Commission of Truth which would bypass the Amnesty Law and really look at what had happened during the dictatorship. Of course those on the far-right attacked it, including Bolsonaro, who would later become the president and famously said, “Only dogs look for bones.”
At a screening yesterday, someone asked if the film shouldn’t have ended with us seeing the death of [a character]. What I just told you is the best explanation as to why the film continues with the conversation between the young student and [a character] who cannot deal with the past, because he hasn’t been trained to do that. When the young student puts down the thumb drive before him, he just freezes because what’s on it is the last thing he wants to see. He cannot deal with what has happened to his own family, which I think is tragedy borne from Brazil as a country.
So the character of the young woman is more of an idealistic projection?
There are people who do what she does, including the Commission of Truth set up by Dilma—that’s a reality—and I think young people like her are not burdened by the trauma. Also, as a history student she’s trained to look for facts. My mother was a historian, so I think I see a lot of my mom in that character. If you are a politician over 50, though, you’ve been trained in the ways Brazil works, meaning: “Let’s not look at that.”
It’s widely known that Brazilian filmmakers went through a difficult phase under the previous administration. How is the situation now?
It’s back to normal. Everything came back on day one under the new government; it’s like they plugged the old machine that’s been set aside back in. Lula brought back the Ministry of Culture, which had been shut down by Bolsonaro. That’s one of the most violent aggressions against the country, considering Brazil has such a strong relation to its culture. Now, things are back to normal. I, along with the whole crew of the film, was received by Lula at the presidential palace in an evening celebrating Brazilian cinema. During the Bolsonaro years, we were treated like criminals.
Your film won two prizes at Cannes. Earlier this year, Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail won the Grand Jury Prize at Berlin. And Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here won the Oscar last year. Do you think Brazilian cinema is in a good place right now?
Brazilian cinema is in a very good place, and there are two ways of looking at it. As you mentioned, we’ve been lucky to receive such prestige for our films. Besides the ones you named, there was also the wonderful film Baby by Marcelo Caetano, which premiered at Critics Week in Cannes.
The other way to look at Brazilian cinema is to see how diverse it is right now. I’m seeing films from places that never used to produce films, by filmmakers who, 15 or 20 years ago, would never have made them. The public policy of funding new ideas is working very well. Of course, the far right—because they are stupid and have no idea how things work—demand 150 masterpieces from the 150 films made in Brazil each year. Which is something that simply doesn’t happen. Not in Hollywood or anywhere else. I’m just happy, even as a programmer, to see so many films coming from so many places. And I hope right this moment there’s somebody in Brazil working on the editing of something great that we’ll see next year.
You have been a film critic for many years before starting to make films yourself. Do you sometimes find yourself critiquing your own films while watching them?
I think every filmmaker thinks about what he or she does, but the one thing I really think about is trying to picture where my film will be placed in the vocabulary of Brazilian cinema. Where would this film find its place in the broader context? With Bacurau, I was quite sure it was something extremely unusual for Brazilian cinema. At the same time, it has hints of cinema novo from the 1960s but with a tone that is completely WTF.
As for The Secret Agent, it should be noted that for decades, the production of Brazilian cinema was concentrated in the southeast of Brazil. So it is incredibly unusual and revolutionary that the two most prestigious Brazilian films this year, The Secret Agent and The Blue Trail, came from Recife. This is new and really cool.
In the last five years, you served on the main competition jury of all three of Europe’s A-list film festivals (Berlin in 2020, Cannes in 2021, and Venice in 2024). Overall, what has your experience been like?
First of all, I enjoyed them. And I was lucky because none of those experiences led to any unpleasant moments, which I know can happen. It’s probably also because I understand it’s a group decision and doesn’t need to be the way I want things to be. I would never impose anything on the other jurors.
Was there a film you were most disappointed to not see recognized? Or a film you were most happy to be able to honor?
In general, I’ve only had chill experiences. Even when there were disagreements, it was basic democracy—we voted differently. I won some and lost some.
I think I was very disappointed that Fernanda Torres didn’t win Best Actress at Venice last year. It was one of those situations of “What are you guys thinking?” But I did not throw my glass against the wall or anything. And I was very happy to personally give the best director prize to Hong Sangsoo in Berlin. That made me happy. And Hong Sangsoo gave the best actor prize to our film this year in Cannes!
The Secret Agent opens in theaters on Wednesday, November 26.