The Contenders #1: The Secret Agent (Brazil)
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The final Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Film are out. There are 5 on that list. Let's try to watch them all then vote for our favorite!
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https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-secret-agent/
The Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, who has gifted us such breathtakers as Aquarius (NYFF54) and Bacurau (NYFF57), returns with a thrillingly unpredictable, empowering political fable about people swept up in forces beyond their control. A dynamic, shape-shifting epic set in Mendonça’s hometown of Recife during the late 1970s, The Secret Agent earned him the Best Director award at Cannes. Wagner Moura was also deservedly honored as Best Actor at the festival for his magnetic performance as a widowed former university researcher whose life has been violently upended by the greed and vengeance of a government bureaucrat. On the run and living under an alias during the country’s military dictatorship, he tries to escape, while also reconnecting with the young son he had to leave behind. Even this brief description cannot fully prepare the viewer for the zigzagging subplots and delights of Mendonça’s eccentric and affectionate ode to the movies and the Brazil of his youth—and to maintaining individuality amid abuses of power.
2026 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Wagner Moura), Best International Feature Film, and Best Casting.